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Dúo del Mar - Falla's Danza de la Vida Breve (recorded at the Palau de l...
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Meeting Neddy
YOURS TRULY WITH HARRY SECOMBE, BOURNEMOUTH OCTOBER 1995
A BRUSH WITH GREATNESS:
SIR HARRY SECOMBE
As an unknown freelance in the autumn of 1995 I was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to write a feature on The Goon Show Preservation Society’s Bournemouth Convention, A Weekend Called Fred. As a Goons aficionado, meeting fans from Australia, New Zealand and the USA, plus the show’s producers and sound effects men was an attractive proposition. However, I was disappointed to discover there would be no actual Goons attending. Peter Sellers was dead. Spike Milligan was grumpy and unapproachable. Harry Secombe had been knighted and was busy in West End theatre. So unbeknown to the Society, I decided to write a letter to one of the originals, Michael Bentine.
I was surprised when Bentine phoned me to announce that he was going to California as he was dying with prostate cancer. He told me he already had the inscription planned for his gravestone; "You know I believe in the spirit world and the afterlife?" I said I was aware. "Well, on my grave I'm having "I'm sorry I'm not available just now, but leave a message and I'll get back to you." We both laughed.
“I wish you well, but I aim to expire in the sunshine.” He died a year later. I looked at other celebrities who loved the Goons to see if I could tempt one to come along. I recalled that Dusty Springfield was a huge fan and could do all the voices. I called her manager, Vicki Wickham.
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She said she thought Dusty would love it. But closer to the event, Vicki called me back to say Dusty had a gig that weekend and couldn't make it.
I had one weak option left. It was a long shot, so I wrote an unctuous letter to Sir Harry Secombe. A week later, the phone rang.
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| SELLERS, MICHAEL BENTINE, & SPIKE MILLIGAN |
“I wish you well, but I aim to expire in the sunshine.” He died a year later. I looked at other celebrities who loved the Goons to see if I could tempt one to come along. I recalled that Dusty Springfield was a huge fan and could do all the voices. I called her manager, Vicki Wickham.
I had one weak option left. It was a long shot, so I wrote an unctuous letter to Sir Harry Secombe. A week later, the phone rang.
“Yes …who’s this?” There was a giggle.
“It’s Harry!” Stupidly, I said “Harry who?” Another giggle followed by “How many bloody Harrys do you know man? Secombe! It’s Neddy!” I was bowled over. The legendary Neddy Seagoon was talking to me. “Blimey,” he said, “just sitting here in my dressing room reading your letter. You’re a miserable bugger, aren’t you?” I told him I was simply pulling out all the emotional stops trying to appeal to his better nature. The fact that the show was still so popular after four decades around the world, and none of us were getting any younger. He listened, and I asked “Will you come?”
“Oh … all right then, but only for half an hour. I can’t stand those bloody Goon fans - they’re all barking mad, you know. Send me the details, time, venue, and meet me when I get there. You’d better protect me! Don’t tell them I’m coming.”
On the Saturday afternoon, I was instructed to wait for him outside the hotel. Inside, on the stage the Goons producer Dennis Main-Wilson was being interviewed before a rapt audience. Outside a large silver Mercedes, HS1, pulled up. The passenger door was flung open and I was beckoned inside. I guided the chauffeur around the back of the building. Harry shook my hand and told me I needed to go on a diet. He followed me to the stage door. I entered, blundered onto the stage and interrupted the interview, announcing
“Ladies and gentlemen! A special guest! Sir Harry Secombe!” The crowd went wild, Harry strode up to the mike and blew a loud raspberry, and spent the next two hours talking to fans and signing autographs. Eventually, I found a quiet room, ordered tea and biscuits and sat with the great Seagoon talking about comedy. It was a wonderful afternoon, and a fine piece of radio in the company of a master clown and true gentleman. The following morning I had breakfast with Dennis Main-Wilson, discussing shows he’d produced such as Hancock’s Half Hour. The weekend ended with a batter pudding hurling contest on the beach. Every time I look at that photograph, it makes me smile.
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OLD FASHIONED & TOO MUCH WORK
OLD FASHIONED AND TOO MUCH WORK
Britons live, unfortunately, in a society where renting a home seems far less preferable than owning the building. The Germans, for example, have much more rented accommodation and seem to exist quite happily with the situation. Back in the days when we had a more thoughtful and compassionate social system in the UK, we had thousands of council houses. I know how much they were appreciated after the war. I lived in three of them. The more houses built by your local council,
Then came Margaret "there is no such thing as society" Thatcher. The very idea of allowing ordinary, low paid people to live in rented social housing was an anathema to the Iron Lady. It offended her everything-makes-profit grocer's spite. No more council house building; tenants could subscribe to Thatcher's theorem: renters = losers/scroungers, house owners = upright 'hard working' taxpayers. And so under the Tory scheme many people bought their rented home from their Council of Housing Association landlord, and I was one of the buyers. Why? Because we needed to move. My job required me to be near the M1 motorway; we had no choice; if I had a house to sell, then that put us on the 'chain'; we could buy a house.
That was 30 years ago, and I'm writing this in the house we bought back then. Now, with one of our children dead and the other living back in our home town of Hull, we're in our 70s, rattling around in our 4 bedroomed 'mansion', and want to return to our roots, downsizing to a smaller place in the City of Culture, close to family and friends at last. A 4 bedroomed detached 'period' house in a quiet avenue close to the centre of town? One might imagine an early sale, but fashion and the changing social scene appear to be dictating that my wife and I will live out our swan song right here in Mansfield.
The house went on the market in November last year. Since then 7 couples have made appointments to view. Three of these never bothered to turn up. One made an offer £40k below the asking price. The other three offered a mixed but similar range of negatives; "Too old-fashioned""Too much work to do""Garden too small""Parking a problem", etc. It has been suggested that we lower the price, but with problems such as those expressed I can't see that making any difference.
In the final analysis, one has to take a wider world view and remind one's self just how lucky we are. We live in a cosy, mortgage-free home. We have good neighbours. We are not suffering like refugees, not starving, and even allowing for all the strictures of nasty Tory politics, we're still better off than many similar couples throughout the world. All that said, I wish someone would appreciate the potential of this house as a family home. But that's me being old fashioned, and proposing 'too much work'.
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CHASM
Chasm
All we can do is wonder
Over what nefarious force
Gouged that gap to wound the earth
So cheerlessly between us;
An ecclesiastic excavation by your God?
Deep, your carnivorous dark canyon
Wherein you hope our luminous liberties
Might be sucked down in limp surrender,
Harvested or integrated like dead butterflies,
Mere exhibits in your showcase of insanity.
Once there could have been a bridge
Whereupon we may have met half way,
Paused above the stygian depth to talk.
But the tongue is not your culture.
Just the blood-wet swinging of the sword.
Primeval, your vicious visage cloaked behind
A coward’s cowl, a black habit, foul façade
Of anonymity, heartless, cruel, conscience free,
You seek to recreate your Golden age of Guilt
Upon my family’s shattered limbs.
Thus across the chasm do we stand, perplexed;
Your laser beams of spite and hate
The only things to bridge that cretin’s crazed crevasse
Thus strutting backwards beneath your barren banner,
Quoting distorted verse; human progress in reverse.
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Trombone Shorty // Live in New Orleans // Full Concert
A BREAK FROM POLITICS, WORRY, TRUMP, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS ... 2 HOURS OF UPLIFTING FUNK FROM NEW ORLEANS.
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Hypernormalisation
Hypernormalisation
We live in a strange, inexplicable world. Take this blog, for instance. Before the internet and the PC, those of us who sought to express something about our daily lives would have kept a diary. In that little book the seasons would roll and turn, our fortunes go up and down, and no-one else would read about it all perhaps until after our death. Now, with a blog, we are exposing ourselves to the wider world. With a few people we may be making ourselves popular; “Oh, that Roy, have you seenwhat he’s written now?” But as this self-exposure becomes addictive, we can also fuel hatred and misunderstanding. Blogging is the cyber equivalent of the mad bloke on the bus, sitting on the seat no-one else wants to sit on, ranting away in a loud voice. For a writer like myself, of course, blogging is a semantic gymnasium, somewhere we go every few days to exercise our keyboard skills. And unless we delete these pages for all time, they will remain in cyberspace as a shadow of who we were for eternity. Inevitably, this is all pointless, but it keeps us occupied, and that’s the whole idea. Why talk to people or write letters with pens on paper when you can sit here in stony, silent isolation.
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| Man of frightening vision: Adam Curtis |
Watching Adam Curtis’s epic documentary Hypernormalisationon Sunday night on BBC I-Player was both a depressing yet enlightening experience. We’re all victims of a creepy system which dupes us into distracted inactivity. I have always maintained that organisations such as the Occupy Movement were well-meaning yet directionless. The fact that you wave a placard and erect a tent on Wall Street or outside St. Paul’s cathedral may well signify to a wider world that some of us are unhappy with the greed and inequality of the system, but what happens when you all pack up and go home? The answer is nothing, because there is no cohesive plan to follow once the chanting and the marching’s over.
So perhaps the only distant light at the end of this long dark tunnel is Jeremy Corbyn and the Momentum movement, yet even then I’m clutching at straws. The bulk of the Labour Party and the whole media circus are determined to bring him down, and most of the time they succeed. If a tree falls in a forest and no-one hears it, it’ll be reported as Jermy Corbyn’s fault. Socialism is a very dirty word indeed. It might never pass through the lips of the massed rear guard of Blairites, as they consider the Parliamentary Labour Party to be their own fiefdom. It has nothing to do with the electorate who put them there. After all, if you’re a member of such an exclusive club, you don’t want to invite the car park attendant or the janitor in for a drink. The only time you need to speak with them is during an election.
All a disgruntled old lefty can do is imagine. Imagine if Corybyn’s main policies became the battering ram to drive a wedge through the nasty, xenophobic right wing greed and lies on the opposite benches. Imagine if the re-nationalisation of the railways and the taking back of Royal Mail, the restoration of the NHS and other such ideas suddenly saw the PLP rallying behind such policies, ideas which Keir Hardie, Bevan and Atlee would have recognised as fair and just. Imagine all those self-centred carping harpies who sit behind the Labour Leader suddenly decided to actually fight the Tories rather than ape them. But it’ll never happen. The only way forward is for the grass roots new Labour membership which grew so dramatically during the leadership election campaign to find a common voice, get out on the streets, cause a ruckus. That groundswell needs to break through the dead air between elections. Meanwhile, everyone’s back to staring at their I-Phones, tuning in to see the execrable Ed Balls on Strictly Come Prancing, and worrying about what’s happening to Bake-Off.
Right now, in various locations in the world, people who have written much lighter polemics than this are festering in dark cells, awaiting their next round of torture. The people of Aleppo are being cruelly bombed to a bloody pulp, and thousands of displaced refugees are either drowning or rotting in makeshift camps wondering what happened to dreams of a better life. And I’m sitting here with my apparent crocodile tears in comfort.
So Adam Curtis is right; we are living in a sinisterly constructed capitalist cyber world, where protest is simply a visual vehicle, something to be either denigrated or, should it become too dangerous, manipulated, as we’ve seen with the huge success of Vladimir Putin’s political alchemist, Sarkov. Another drone strike, another suicide bomb, another beheading. As long as it’s loud and colourful, it’ll make for good TV. Then we can get back to Gogglebox and our Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Elderly fogeys like me are simply little specks of crumbling rock poking through the sea of sewage. We’re deemed to be out of touch, our old ideas representations of failure. Post Brexit, in the era of Trump, the ultimate spectre of capitalism can reach an unashamed new peak as the new fascism. Close the borders. Shut down the state. Abandon welfare. Let them drown, let them starve. Kill off compassion. Pull up the drawbridge. Dump the disabled. The only thing which matters now is more and more money; not for us at the bottom of the festering heap, but those at the top, cajoled and massaged by their parliamentary lapdogs whose salaries are just pocket money, taxi fares to get them to their other occupations in banking, business, PR and the law.
People are angry, but they are not collectively angry. This individualist rage simply flickers on and off like mayflies in the summer grass. We need our anger to be like a swarm of locusts to strip the heavy-laden trees of the arrogant, greedy rich bare. But never mind; that’s just colourful imagery - it would make a good movie.
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WELCOME TO LIE-LIE LAND
WELCOME TO LIE-LIE LAND
Writing something like this seems a waste of time. It is ‘preaching to the converted’. In the current dark and threatening atmosphere with its sinister, uncertain future, it could also be dangerous. Yet when one becomes frustrated with the madness which is sweeping across the world, and your only outlet is the use of words, what is there left to do? I read today that in parts of Syria where ISIS rule, the heads of executed victims are left on walls, lined up so that children can retrieve them and use them to play football. This is the far, outer edge of the madness, yet it is not far removed from the spite, anger and irrational hatred which is being promulgated by Britain’s tabloid press.
Following David Cameron’s naïve and over-confident decision to offer Britain a referendum on Europe, the fires of simplistic populism continue to be stoked daily by a rabid media (owned mostly by tax-avoiding billionaires domiciled outside the UK) and a cabal of unscrupulous politicians with duplicitous agendas.
Thus, on June 23, the People had their say, and the victorious 52% no doubt expected us to be out of the EU the following day. Now we find ourselves in a new era; it’s called ‘Post Truth’. It’s been created by people like Donald Trump, (whose new supporters include the Ku Klux Klan) Nigel Farage and others, and it means that veracity (albeit never the sharpest knife in a politician’s toolbox) has been replaced by a loud and proud dishonesty. Now you can say what you like, invent bogus ‘facts’ on the hoof, and be as insultingly incorrect in all areas as you wish, providing this keeps your followers enraged. To maintain this carpet-biting indignation, all we need to do is ignore and refuse to read any genuine facts which oppose our vitriolic frame of mind. ![Image result for IMAGES tRUMP AND fARAGE]( "View source image")
For example on June 8th, 2 weeks before the referendum, David Cameron’s father in law, Lord Astor, said “The EU referendum is merely advisory; it has no legal standing to force an exit. Parliament is still sovereign.” Perversely, it was that very ‘sovereignty’ which we’d never lost that everyone was voting to ‘restore’. When three Supreme Court judges are consulted on the Parliamentary Law relating to UK sovereignty, and come up with their hapless answer, they are dubbed ‘Enemies of The People’. Meanwhile, Cameron, in the wake of his badly conceived mess, has bitten the bullet and sloped off into a well-heeled country supper oblivion, whilst his austerity ‘slash and burn’ colleague Osborne is doing a well-paid ‘Blair’ on the US lecture circuit. The new and seemingly clueless Westminster cartel have been left to clean up their mess by pandering wherever possible to the bigotry and xenophobia which increases day by day.So we are indeed at the top of a slippery slope into social and political darkness. Will this threat subside when we thankfully leave the EU and ‘take our country back’? (Which begs the question - where had it been, who took it?) I doubt it. Politics and democracy have been injected with a powerful, deadly poison; hate. It is the same virus which infected Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There is no longer any room for compassion or alternative opinions. The new, growing breed of trolls who infest social media will not tolerate the sentiments expressed here, for they see their ill-informed anonymous cowardice as some form of strength. However, we should remember the words of the American philosopher Eric Hoffer: “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
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Walking the dog
Walking the Dog
This was a short story entered for Amnesty International's
annual competition. It did very well in the top ten but of course, it didn't win.
So what else is there to do but put it on line;
someone out there might even enjoy reading it.
It was late September and there was a distinct chill in the air. The last train to St. Petersburg had left. It was midnight and the traveller stood in the dim yellow light on the deserted station platform. He found a rickety bench, placed his rucksack on the ground and sat wearily down. He’d made a mental note to designate this ramshackle, lonely outpost surrounded by forest as ‘Fiddler on the roof’ country. It would make a good yarn in the pub when he got home. Why anyone would alight from a train here was a puzzle, yet he’d had no choice. Tired and deep in thought over the fact that he now had seven long hours to wait until the next train, he was taken aback when an old man wearing an astrakhan hat and a heavy, grubby military greatcoat emerged from the gloom.
The traveller spoke very little Russian, so he was surprised when the old man addressed him in English.
“I see you are Britishki?” The traveller looked up and smiled.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Oh, the boots. And your backpack. It was a guess. Long time before train, huh?”
“Yes. Seven’o’clock. It’s very late. What are you doing out here?”
“I walk my dog. It’s peaceful when everyone is asleep.”
The traveller looked around, but could see no dog.
“Where is your dog?”
“He died.” said the old man, seating himself alongside the traveller on the bench.
“But … you say you’re walkingwith him?”
“Ah, yes. Do not be confused. I am walking with his memory. Leo was a lovely golden Labrador, my good friend for many years, and when I think of him it gives me peace.”
The traveller was momentarily lost for words. He took out his cigarettes and offered one to the old man. He accepted and they lit up.
“What caused you to miss your train?”
“My visa was out of order. I wanted to go to Tallin but the guard said if I did I would need a new visa to return to St. Petersburg, so I left the train, but now I must wait all this time.”
“Ah yes, of course, of course. Estonia is now another country. It used to be part of the USSR.”
The traveller peered into the darkness. Above, the sharp, bright stars twinkled through scattered clouds.
“What place is this?”
The old man blew out smoke and gestured into the night, waving his hand.
“The town is called Kingisepp. This station was built when the Tsar was on the throne. It could do with a coat of paint. The last time it was decorated was when Stalin passed through.”
“What was it like?” asked the traveller.
“What was what like?”
“Well, do you remember those days, Stalin, Kruschev?”
“Of course. I am 89 years old. I remember a lot of things. Stalin? Some idolised him. Others feared him. He killed my wife.” The traveller gave a sharp intake of breath.
“Really? How did -”
“Oh, you don’t want to know that. It’s a long time ago.”
“Well, if you’d rather not talk about it …”
“How old are you, son?”
“I’m 50. Why?”
“Ah, you look so much younger. Did you ever fight in a war?”
The traveller shook his head and faintly smiled.
“Thankfully, no. And I wouldn’t like to.”
“Stalin killed my wife, Katya, because she spoke English fluently. It was a dangerous talent; speaking English got you suspected as a spy. Her parents were language teachers.”
“So who took her from you? The KGB?”
“No. We still had the Cheka in 1952. I was relieved when she died in prison.”
“Relieved? Weren’t you sad or angry?”
“Yes, both of those, but relieved, because I knew then she was at peace. She was only nineteen when the siege of Leningrad ended. They gave her the Order of Lenin for outstanding services to the State. She had saved many comrades, and especially children. But that didn’t save her. She risked her life crossing Lake Ladoga bringing supplies over the ice, and at one time she manned the anti-aircraft guns outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral. And do you know what her favourite word was?”
“Please tell me …”
“My name. I was in the Red Army bringing the trucks over the lake when I met her. She was sat one night late in ’43 when the convoy stopped. She was cross-legged by a fire. She was meditating; you know, like one of those Tibetan or Indian monks. But I was impatient. It was a cold dark night and I said ‘let’s get a move on, girl!’ and she opened her eyes and said ‘What is your name, comrade?’ And I said ‘Vladimir’. She said ‘I will come now, but you must always set aside time for peace, comrade. War is an interruption, peace, if we choose it, is forever.’”
“So why was your name her favourite word?”
The old man looked up at the sky.
“May I have another cigarette?” The traveller lit two up and passed one over. The old man pointed at the stars.
“You know about our space station up there?” The traveller nodded.
“Yes … isn’t it called ‘Mir’?”
“Yes. In the modern Russian language the word 'mir' has two different meanings. It can also mean either 'peace' or 'the world’. But before the Revolution it also meant ‘society’.”
The traveller took a long draw on his cigarette and turning to the old man, smiled.
“Yes, but didn’t Tolstoy name his great work War and Peace?”
“Yes,” replied the old man, ‘Voyná i mir’.”
“But that was … what, decadesbefore the Revolution …”
“1869. So I think Tolstoy actually meant his book to be called ‘War and Society’.”
The traveller gently laughed. “That’s an intriguing thought. But what about your name?”
“Ah, there you have it. Vladimir is a popular Russian name and it means ‘The one who owns the world’ It is made up from two Russian words: 'vladet' - which in English means 'to possess' and 'mir' - 'the world.' So when I married my peace-loving Katya, I told her she was my world and that I was proud to possess her.”
“Why was she arrested?”
“Oh, some jealous informer in Leningrad said she’d received some illegal literature from the west. Something Stalin’s blockheads couldn’t understand. Religion.”
“I see, what Marx called the ‘opium of the people’?”
“Oh, but it wasn’t anything Russian, you see. We married just after the war. She’d become a Buddhist. The Cheka’s illiterate goons had no idea what to do with this. The Orthodox Church was bad enough but this was something else. As far as they were concerned, she’d been using Buddhism as a cover for espionage. I was out of town when they came for her. When I got back to our apartment it had been ransacked. She was in prison for a few weeks then they moved her to a gulag. She died on her 31st birthday in 1956, but a fellow prisoner visited me in 1960 and gave me a letter Katya had written to me.”
The traveller felt as if he had walked into a nocturnal tragedy, an unexpected drama which felt unreal. Somewhere in the dark woods an owl hooted. He glanced up at the sky; the clouds had gone and the stars shone brightly. His curiosity was running riot now.
“Am I being too inquisitive, but … what did she write?”
Vladimir stubbed out his cigarette on the arm of the bench and delved within his greatcoat, producing a yellowing, scruffy envelope held together with sellotape. From it he took the faded, flimsy pages and began to read aloud in a faltering voice.
“We must always remember, Vladimir, that war and misunderstanding are like weeds in a cornfield. The corn is peace, and peace is the harvest. It is a gift which we give ourselves, even when the guns are firing. War and conflict comes from without; peace comes from within, and what happens outside cannot touch it. Remember this always; we fought and struggled in the darkness of those nights so that our comrades and their children could enjoy peace in the daylight.”
He folded the letter, replaced in in the envelope and returned it to his coat. The two men sat in silence for a while, then Vladimir stood and shook the traveller’s hand.
“I wish you peace, my British friend. Now I must walk my dog.” At that, he shuffled off into the surrounding gloom.
The traveller lit another cigarette. He stared across the silent railway track and saw something moving. The weak light from the platform hardly stretched that far. Yet for a brief moment his heart raced as a golden Labrador vanished into the woods.
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Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End Of Love
With Bowie and others leaving us, now the great Mr. Cohen, 2016 seems to be turning out to be the year decency, compassion, creative dialogue and hope have all been trashed. Best then to look back at the decent decades, the times when everything good seemed possible. This is just a reminder.
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Sergeant Reaper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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STOP THE WORLD
STOP THE WORLD
to get off!
In 1961 Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse launched a West End musical entitled Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. They got the title from a piece of graffiti on an East London wall. The musical’s long forgotten, but the graffiti’s back, and after the events of the past few months, it’s hardly surprising that some people still feel moved to write on a wall. However, for many of the victims of Kensington’s Grenfell Tower inferno the wall is one of the main channels for anger.
The world has turned upside down. This week marks a year since the UK voted to leave the EU. And we’re still in it until 2019. America’s political system left the rails and crashed down a historical mineshaft with the election of a vile, mendacious narcissist devoid of one iota of statesmanship. Maintaining a ‘special relationship’ with Donald Trump is like poking a rabid Rottweiler with a sharp stick.
And the UK had an unnecessary election which has probably done us all a favour. The dam of public disapproval for the economic suffering inflicted upon us has finally burst. We’ve had enough. Yes, Theresa May’s battered, laughingstock of a ‘government’ is hanging on by its fingernails, but this election had only one winner; The People. The ‘strong and stable government’ campaigning by an over-confident May, thoroughly expecting her ‘deserved’ landslide, was stilted, repetitive, lacking any empathy with the public. Stage managed by the Australian Sir Lynton Crosby, it used the same defunct slogans and methods which failed miserably in the last New Zealand elections, yet Britain’s Tories have been happy to pay Crosby’s reported £2.4 million fee. Now they intend sharing power with the DUP, the political wing of the Old Testament.
The barrage of media hatred against Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn during the campaign was breath-taking. Painted as everything from a lunatic to a terrorist, he never the less battled on. His rallies, compared to May’s Top Gear-style gaggle of supporters standing around her battle bus, were natural events attracting thousands. The rally at Huddersfield looked like the Sermon on the Mount.
And now, in the richest borough in the UK, the avoidable tragedy of Kensington’s Grenfell Tower fire. In November 2016, on their blog, (Grenfell Action Group) the residents angrily predicted this fire after so many safety recommendations had been ignored. The inequality and unfairness in our society have been brought into sharp focus in Kensington, as well as revealing the true nature of some of our public figures. Challenged by Andrew Marr on TV, the Chancellor Philip Hammond admitted that he’d voted against a bill last year which aimed to ensure that “all private landlords made sure their homes were fit for human habitation.” Hammond’s response was that “No regulation isn't always bad.”
Mrs. May said she couldn’t visit the Grenfell survivors because of ‘security’ reasons, yet the following day our 91-year old Queen was there talking to distraught residents, as Jeremy Corbyn had done two days earlier. And in the midst of all this, someone has to start the Brexit talks. It seems at last that we, the peasants, are revolting. And as that ex-punk and unlikely Brexit supporter Johnny Rotten said, ‘Anger is an energy’. Let’s use it wisely.
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A MESSAGE TO MR. HUNT
A MESSAGE to MR. HUNT
Stand aside from my NHS
You’re not a guard, a sentry
You see treatment as a source of wealth
Not free at point of entry.
Stand aside from my hospital
With your greedy, lying grin
Run along to Richard Branson
Who’ll charge to let you in.
Take your credit card to BMI
To Circle Health and Bupa
But when your credit rating’s blown
See if then they seem so super.
Take your hedge fund friends
From my busy ward
I want to see them off it
We’re here to help humanity
Not cash cows for your profit
We are the final vestige
Of what you’ll never comprehend
The underpaid protectors
Of a system you can’t end;
Caring and compassion,
Lives to enhance and save,
And you shall never rule us,
From your cradle to the grave.
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THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN
Saints vs Superstition
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| Take a good look up there, Donald - that's not where you'll be going ... |
It may not seem overtly superstitious but the way in which religion branches out in all manner of bizarre directions to keep the faithful on message is, to say the least, bizarre. As the saying goes, ‘You couldn’t make this up,’ but apparently, in the name of the Lord, the church can make up anything it likes.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with the beatification of vague and sometimes mythical characters who become saints. Myths, legends, gossip and rumours handed down the ages are cobbled together to make icons of sanctity. No doubt in most cases in which a saint is proved to have existed, it would appear that they were – by the measure of the times they lived in – decent people. Perhaps for every walk of life, from humble ditch-digging to banking, having their own religious patron is a clever device to encourage a sense of classless inclusivity. The banker who I may never meet is blessed, but so is my sewage trench, which he may never smell. Praise the Lord. As we’ve already seen with St Christopher, the object of your inspired devotion is not always, when examined in detail, connected to many (or any) historical facts.
He built a hospice for travellers in what is now Saint-Fiacre, Seine-et-Marne in France and he’s also the patron saint of haemorrhoid sufferers. His feast day is 1 September. Yet the subjects of these stories occupy the faithful, sending the more devout among them into a state of worshipful bliss. All you need to do is believe. Here are some of the more unusual saints.
St Isidore (560-636)
In 1997, Pope John Paul II declared Isidore of Seville to be the patron saint of the internet. Considering Isidore logged off in the year 636, quite a while before the first web connection in 1969, he’s been granted this Silicon Valley status probably because the church likes to keep pace with popular culture. In Isidore’s case, at least we know something about him.
He was bishop of Seville in sixth-century Spain. Two of his brothers, Leander and Fulgentius and one of his sisters, Florentina, also achieved sainthood. Leander and Fulgentius served as bishops and Florentina as an abbess. So why is he patron saint of the internet? Because he tried to record everything ever known in an encyclopaedia, a twenty-book production called Etymologies, also known as the Origins,which was published after his death. It was a kind of Wikipedia and for a thousand years it was considered to be the ultimate wellspring of human knowledge. His feast day is 4 April. St Isidore of Seville shouldn’t be confused with St Isidore the patron saint of farmers and labourers.
St Columbanus (543-615)
The patron saint of motorcyclists is not official, as his position was only suggested by an Anglican bishop, John Oliver, who happens to be a biker. Columbanus was a well-educated Irishman and, by all accounts, handsome. As a free-wheeling young man he apparently liked the ladies a little too much and one day one of them gave him some stern advice to mend his ways. Much against his family’s wishes, he decided to become a monk at Bangor Abbey in County Down to save his soul.
His image as a biker seems a little tenuous. Aged 42, Columbanus left Ireland and began travelling Europe as a missionary with a dozen other monks to the pagan tribes in Gaul, who were probably closer to being the Hells’ Angels of their day. Over thirty years the brotherhood founded monasteries and finally settled at Bobbio in northern Italy, where he re-built a neglected church. That’s where the biker’s bones remain today. His feast day is 23 November.
St Drogo (1105-1186)
It is not quite clear why St Drogo is the patron saint of coffee shop owners. Had he been somewhere where coffee has a history, for example Ethiopia, there might have been a coffee link.
Drogo, also known as Droun, was a Flemish orphan who became a hermit. He visited shrines on penitential pilgrimages and for a while was a shepherd at Sebourg, France. Apparently, he suffered a terrible illness which left him disfigured. So he stayed in his hermit’s hut for forty years. He is also patron of shepherds, unattractive and repulsive people, bodily ills, hernias, broken bones, cattle, deaf people, dumbness, gall stones and insanity. That’s the great thing about saints – no-one is forgotten. You could say he’d need a few cups of coffee with those responsibilities. His history reveals that he spent the last forty years of his life in seclusion, ‘surviving only on barley, water and the holy eucharist’. His feast day is 16 April.
St Bibiana
Here’s one for Christian homophobes; birth and death unknown, the fourth-century St Bibiana, patron saint of hangovers, has her feast day on 2 December. She had a tough time fighting off a determined lesbian named Rufina, a woman whose methods of seduction descended into violence. Bibiana was a good Christian virgin and was having none of this. So, deprived of a promise of girl-on-girl action the perverted governor of Rome, Apronianus, ordered Bibiana to be tortured and beaten with scourges that were loaded with lead plummets until she died. Bibiana died with a smile on her face, and although her body was thrown out for the wild animals, none of them touched it. Around her grave so-called ‘magical and mysterious’ herbs were said to grow. It remains unclear what these were, but apparently they could cure a hangover.
The catalogue of saints is long and complex and most of them have weird and wonderful stories that never cease to amaze the casual browser into religion’s ambiguous history. For recreation value alone, here’s a selection of some other wacky saints, minus their birth and death dates or feast dates. If you’re keen to know more, they’re all out there, waiting to entertain and convert you.
St Vitus: patron saint of over-sleeping.
St Arnulf of Metz: patron saint of beer.
St Giles: patron saint of the fear of breastfeeding.
St Apollonia: patron saint of dentists.
St Matthew: patron saint of accountants and tax collectors.
St Ivo of Kermartin: patron saint of lawyers.
St Bernard of Menthon: patron saint of mountaineers and skiers.
St Ambrose: patron saint of beekeepers.
St Cajetan: patron saint of gamblers and the unemployed.
St Genesius of Rome: patron saint of stand-up comedy, plumbers, actors, clowns and torture victims.
St Gummarus: patron saint of lumberjacks and separated spouses.
St Honoratus (Honorius) of Amiens: patron saint of bakers.
St Saint Lidwina: patron saint of ice-skaters.
St Malo: patron saint of pig keepers.
St Barbara: patron saint of firemen and people who work with explosives.
Good old religion ...
'You can't make it up?'
Oh, but you can ...
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That's Not All Right, Mama
That’s Not All Right, Mama.
The sad story of Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup
‘“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel what old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw.”
Elvis Presley[1]
Tom McGuinness, (right) a British blues pioneer, ex-member of the chart topping 60s favourites Manfred Mann, returned to his first love, the blues, in 1979 as a founder member, with Paul Jones, of the UK’s premier R&B group, The Blues Band. At the time of this book’s publication, the band are about to celebrate their 35th anniversary.
Tom once told me a story which haunted me for years and eventually led to this book. Not long before he died, in the early 1970s, Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup came over to Britain from the US to play in one of the highly successful American Folk Blues festivals which had been running as popular events since the mid-1960s. As Crudup had nowhere to stay, Tom invited him to bed down at his flat in London. What struck him immediately was how poverty-stricken the great man seemed to be. After all, Crudup had written three of Elvis’s biggest hits – including his first multi-million selling single on Sun Records, That’s All Right, Mama. Many had already dubbed him ‘the Father of rock’n’roll.’ Yet he didn’t even have a decent guitar, was poorly dressed, and when he took his stage suit out of his battered old suitcase at Tom’s place, he discovered that the rats back home had eaten the back out of his jacket. McGuinness had to find him some new threads to wear to perform in. Tom had the privilege in 1970 of recording The London Sessions with Crudup, along with Benny Gallagher and Hughie Flint.
Big Boy Crudup’s is perhaps the cruellest and most poignant story concerning non-payment of royalties. In his wonderful book, Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive[2], photographer, writer, blues manager and promoter Dick Waterman outlines his battle for Crudup’s royalties with a sensitivity which can literally move a reader to tears.
Arthur was born in Forest, Mississippi, on August 24th 1905, and died on 28 March 1974, in Nassawadox, Virginia. Six foot four inches tall, he was no stranger to hard, physical labour, and for most of his life worked in various rural jobs. Unlike many of his musical peers, he was a late-comer to learning the guitar, which he didn’t pick up until he was 32. His guitar playing mentor was a local blues player known as Papa Harvey. Arthur never became what we’d call a virtuoso on the instrument, but his spirited and rhythmic accompaniment, along with his high, clear voice soon got him noticed. After an early spell in Clarksdale, Mississippi, playing at blues parties, like many other men in the region, in search of a better living he headed north to Chicago, where he played on street corners. At first, the windy city didn’t provide him with the income he’d hoped for, and he ended up living in a packing crate underneath Chicago’s elevated railroad.
The story goes that he was playing for loose change on the sidewalk when he was discovered by Chicago’s legendary blues ‘Mr. Fixit’, Lester Melrose. (below)
Melrose had moved to Chicago around 1914, and hoped to find success as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox baseball team, but his trial failed. He became a grocery salesman. Around 1920, together with older brother Walter and Marty Bloom, he established The Melrose Brothers Music Company, a publishing house and music store on Chicago’s south side. It was in his shop that he met Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941) who would become Melrose’s chief writer and arranger. By 1925 Lester had found his metier – as a record producer and, most importantly, a talent scout. He sold his share in the shop and began promoting the best of the many blues artists who were arriving in Chicago, and his aptitude paid off handsomely with the recording of It's Tight Like That with Tampa Red (1904 -1981, a.k.a. Hudson Woodbridge and Hudson Whittaker), an influential guitarist and singer from Georgia. Of course, as a publisher, Melrose was as wily as the rest, and knew the value of taking possession of his artists’ compositions.
Crudup landed a significant gig to play at Tampa Red’s house. His playing went down well enough to get him signed, through Melrose, to RCA/Bluebird Records, who released his first recording, If I Get Lucky. Over the years he would cut dozens of tracks for Vocalion and Bluebird, tour with Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and Elmore James, among others, with most of his songs, in particular, Mean Old Frisco establishing him as a major figure on the blues scene. Yet the non-payment of royalties led him to fall out with Lester Melrose. In a 1973 documentary[3], Crudup said
“Every time I’d go make a record, I’d ask Lester, ‘How many records would a man have to make that he didn’t have to work on the farm?’ I could hear my songs on the jukebox all through the South. I had a disc jockey tell me, ‘Now, Arthur, you’re supposed to be in good shape. Your records are selling second from the top. I never knew how much progress I was makin’ because Melrose didn’t tell me.[4]”
Eventually, sick of the music business, he headed down to Mississippi where for a while he ran a bootleg liquor operation, an enterprise which equally matched his skill as a musician, as, apparently, folks came from far and wide for Big Boy’s moonshine. Yet whilst he was making a few bucks distilling Virginia’s finest, his compositions, such as That’s All Right, Mama, My Baby Left Meand So Glad You’re Mine would all be recorded by Elvis Presley and legally this should have made him a rich man. Yet that was not to be. He would die virtually penniless.
In 1968 Dick Waterman, (left) a truly great photographer, superb chronicler of the blues and manager of stars such as Buddy Guy, Big Mama Thornton and Bonnie Raitt, was Crudup’s booking agent during the late 1960s blues revival. He asked Crudup if he’d received any royalties. He had; a few sporadic cheques for nine, twelve and eighteen dollars. Unfortunately, on April 12 that year, Lester Melrose had passed away in his sumptuous villa down in Florida, aged 74, owning the rights to over 3,000 songs, none of which he had written. Waterman enrolled Big Boy Crudup in AGAC, the American Guild of Authors and Composers, and the fight for Arthur’s royalties began. A large firm, Hill and Range, had taken over the affairs of Lester Melrose. After nearly five years of legal wrangling, AGAC informed Waterman that they had come to a settlement with Hill and Range. Waterman agreed to meet Crudup in New York at Hill and Range’s office. With his daughter and three sons, the old man had driven all the way up from Virginia, where he’d spent his later years as a farm labourer.
That arrival in a cold New York had promised to be an exciting day, as the cheque Arthur expected to take home with him was for $60,000. They went into Hill and Range’s offices and the lawyer asked them to wait whilst he went upstairs to the President’s suite to get the cheque. It was a long wait. Yet when the lawyer returned, he was not bearing money – just bad news. The company wouldn’t sign the agreement, saying “It gives away more in settlement than you could hope to get through litigation.” Waterman describes the tragic scene; “Arthur looked at me and I said, ‘They’re not going to pay you, Arthur. You’re going to have to sue them. We’re going to have sue Lester Melrose’s widow.’ But the idea of a black man suing an elderly white woman—it just wasn’t gonna happen.”
The message was cruel and clear – yes, we owe you – yet you’re an old black guy and if you want your money, you’ll have to see us in court. The prospect of pursuing Rose, the surviving widow of Lester Melrose was hopeless. With great dignity Crudup thanked Waterman for all his efforts, saying
“I know you done the best that you could. I respects you and I honours you in my heart. Them people got their ways of keeping folks like me from getting any money. Naked I come into this world and naked I shall leave it. It just ain’t meant to be.”
Compared to Virginia, it was decidedly wintry in New York and both Arthur and his family weren’t dressed for the weather. Shivering, they turned towards their old car, his sad parting shot being
“I ’spect we better start driving now. We got a ways to go.”
A poor man, he died shortly after, on March 28, 1974. But Dick Waterman hadn’t finished. Disgusted, on his way home from Crudup’s funeral, he had a meeting with another lawyer, Ina Meibach, in New York City. Meibach acted to stem the flow of any record company royalty payments to Hill and Range. At that time Chappell Music was in the process of buying out Hill and Range and Dick’s action on behalf of the late Arthur Crudup showed up on Chappell’s corporate radar as the very thing in the take-over package they didn’t want to buy – a legal dispute over an artist’s estate. That would have generated some unpleasant publicity. As Dick said,
“We had the leverage that we needed”.
The first cheque Arthur’s family received was for $248,000 dollars, and since then they’ve had over $3 million more.
One might imagine that there’d be some kind of marker or plaque alongside Virginia’s Route 13 noting that the “Father of Rock ’n’ Roll,” the legend who gave Elvis his first-ever hit and whose work was covered by everyone from Eric Clapton to Creedence Clearwater Revival and Elton John lived and died here. As Dick Waterman commented, “There probably wasn’t a week during the decade of the 1970s when there wasn’t an Arthur Crudup song on the Billboard Top 200 albums,” he says, rambling off a list of seminal rock albums from Clapton’s Slow Hand (“Mean Old Frisco”) to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory (“My Baby Left Me.”)[5]As well as the likes of Elvis and Clapton, he wrote numerous other blues classics for artists such as B. B. King, Big Mama Thornton and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland.
His grave in Franktown, Virginia had to wait until 25 years after his death - the 1990s – before it even had a headstone. Stories about royalty rip-offs occur throughout the music business, but some of the downright chicanery pulled off back in the bad old days has been put to rest.
Over the last decades of the 20thcentury musicians have become more shrewd. They’ve no doubt taken the astute advice of Willie Nelson,who famously gave away the rights of one of his first, and most famous, songs Family Bible for a pittance;
“What I’m saying to all you songwriters is to get yourself a good Jewish lawyer before you sign anything, no matter how much (the publishing or) record companies say they love you.[6]” There are a few cheerful stories regarding royalties. One of the secrets of ensuring an on-going income as a musician is to make an evergreen Christmas record. Bing Crosby may have been groaning around Heaven’s golf course for the past four decades, but White Christmasstill maintains its record at 30 million copies, pipped only by Elton John’s 37 million for his Princess Diana tribute, Candle In The Wind; although White Christmascarries on selling on various compilations every year. One obscure story regarding royalties concerns another Yuletide perennial, Jonah Lewie’s Stop The Cavalry. Lewie, a talented keyboard player and composer, seemed to have peaked following his 1980s hit In The Kitchen at Parties. He’s one of those artists skilled enough in the blues to have actually worked at one time with Son House, as well as other bluesmen visiting the UK. Just before Cavalry (which was never intended as a Christmas record) entered its seasonal radio eternity, the almost-forgotten Lewie had received a surprise bonus. It came in the form of a sizeable royalty cheque, because one of his compositions had appeared on a multi-million selling album by Deutschland’s polyester prince, James Last.Even a song written over 30 years ago, Dave Curtiss and the late Clive Maldoon’s Sepheryn (recorded by Madonna as Ray of Light) brought some benefit the Curtiss family. Yet when artists fade from the scene or are remembered simply as one-hit wonders, the re-packagers and the advertising industry are prepared to take risks. One large confectionery corporation received a shock when they filled UK billboards with an advert for a cheesecake product; its name; American Pie. Don McLean’s lawyers soon sprang into action. In 2002, R&B singer Billy Paul was watching TV when he was taken aback by hearing his voice singing Me and Mrs. Jones, his monster 1973 hit, on a Nike commercial. He didn’t recall ever agreeing to be a spokesman for Nike, and the added fact that he’d never had a royalty statement from Philadelphia International bosses Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff for 27 years didn’t help. He called specialist music attorney Steven Ames Brown, and a subsequent audit of Philadelphia International’s accounting resulted in $500,000 being paid to Paul from unpaid royalties. Had it not been for a Statute of Limitations which meant payments could only be made commencing in 1994, it may have been a much larger sum. Other Philly acts that might have similarly benefited included The Three Degrees, The O’Jays, Lou Rawls and Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes[7].
Even today in the UK, royalty cases continue to line lawyers’ pockets. One time organ player with Procol Harum, Matthew Fisher, brought a claim in 2005 for royalties for his contribution to A Whiter Shade of Pale. Although, after 40 years, most people associate the song with Gary Brooker, in April 2007 the judge awarded Fisher a 40% share in profits from the composition. However, Fisher would only receive royalties from 2005 onwards, the year in which he brought the case, and as the song would soon be out of copyright, he’s probably been wise to enjoy the extra income while it lasted[8]. Nice royalty stories are much thinner on the ground than nasty ones.
Which brings us back to Jonah Lewie. He could never have known, back in the early 70s, working as piano player for a touring US artist, that his future might be secure. That’s more than can be said for the old guy he was playing for. His name was Arthur Crudup.
NOTES/SOURCES
[1]Presley, Elvis, interviewed in the Charlotte Observer, Carolina. June 26th1956
[2]Waterman, Dick: (Introduction by Peter Guralnick, Preface by Bonnie Raitt) Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon New York (2003).
[3]WNN Documentary Born Into The Blues (1973) clips can be seen at http://wn.com/Arthur_Crudup_Born_into_the_Blues
[4]Sugarman, JoeBig Boy’s Blues www.chilaborarts.wordpress.com
[5] IBID
[6]Russell, Tom & Tyson, SylviaAnd Then I Wrote: The Songwriter SpeaksArsenal Pulp Press Vancouver 1995 (from Willie: An Autobiography).
[7]Friedman, Roger,Memphis Sings Like Never Before Fox News article, April 28 2003
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Hands off Robin Hood!
HANDS OFF ROBIN HOOD
Every now and then the controversy of Robin Hood’s home county is re-kindled like a forest fire between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. At the time of writing, it’s crackling away again with local Nottinghamshire headlines such as ‘Yorkshire - hands off Robin Hood’. As a Yorkshireman living in Nottinghamshire I always find this vaguely amusing.
About 20 years ago there was a UK magazine called Encounters. I wrote features for this colourful publication, which was run by none other than Uri Geller. (Yes, OK, Uri Geller … well, it seemed a good idea at the time …) Specialising in historical mysteries, I sold them a feature on Robin Hood. A few hundred yards from my house in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, stands an oak tree. It isn’t an old tree. It was planted by the local council in the 1980s. But at its base, set into the paving stones, is a brass plate with the legend ‘This oak tree marks the spot of the original oak which was the historical central point of Sherwood Forest.’ You’ll have to drive a couple of miles to get to the forest as it stands today, with its major tourist attraction, the Robin Hood visitor centre and the 600 year old Major Oak (pictured below) . But a millennium ago, Mansfield’s town centre was the beating heart of a woodland labyrinth where outlaws hid.
It happens wherever I go. Sitting in the kitchen in a Normandy farmhouse, enjoying a glass of Calvados, the farmer asks where I live in England. When the location ‘Nottinghamshire’ comes up, the French all smile and exclaim “Aaah! Robin Hood!’ On a sleeper train from St. Petersburg to Tallin in 2004, the Russian border guards, rifling through my luggage, examined my passport. They pointed at my address.
“Nottinghamshire?” said their sergeant. “Yes,” I replied, “Nottinghamshire.” The three previously stern visages broke into a wide smile. Almost in unison, they exclaimed
“Kevin Costner - Robin Hood!” There followed a half hour interrogation about the legendary outlaw. The same happened in a bar in Berlin, in Nice in the South of France, and in Munich. Everyone knows something about Robin Hood. Robin Hood is an international brand, a historical Coca Cola, an engine of myth and legend every bit as universal as Ford Motors, the Titanicand the Holy Grail.
There are many books on Robin Hood. Most of them are slim souvenir tourism volumes, while thicker tomes utilise academic rigour to prove or disprove this outlaw’s existence. Yet what occupies fans of the myth around the world are the many mysteries, the tangled roots of the legend, the characters, the arguable chronology, the locations, even the artefacts. This book intends to draw all these strands together, and include the latest research, with interviews with the most prominent Hood historians still ploughing this fascinating furrow.
In a 21st century world of greed and avarice, where the old Barons and Sheriffs have been replaced by robber bankers and corporate pirates, the spirit of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, is as relevant today as it was in Sherwood centuries ago.
ROBIN HOOD: THE MYSTERIES.
The remains of the ‘Fifteen Foresters’
One of the most mystifying occurrences relates to the ballad in which Robin kills the ‘Fifteen Foresters’ who refused to pay him the wager that he won fairly with his archery skills. The last verse states: “They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham, as many there did know; They digged them graves in their church-yard and they buried them all in a row”. Then, according to the historian Joseph Ritson, the following extract appeared in a Sheffield newspaper The Star’ on April 23, 1796: “A few days ago, as some labourers were digging in a garden at Fox-lane, near Nottingham, they discovered six human skeletons entire, deposited in regular order side by side, supposed to be part of the fifteen foresters that were killed by Robin Hood.” The news story goes on to say that the garden stood on the site of an ancient church that had been dedicated to St Michael and had been totally demolished in the Reformation, so no doubt the bones had been properly buried in the churchyard. The proprietor of the garden ordered the pit where the bodies were found to be filled up, “being unwilling to disturb the relics of humanity and the ashes of the dead!” The original site of St. Michael’s church and its graveyard secrets have never since been discovered.
Robin Hood’s possessions and The Knights Templar
The location of Nottingham’s St Ann’s Well in the Wells Road, St Ann’s, is the site of a buried “treasure” connected to the Robin Hood legend. Known over the centuries as Robynhode’s Well, this holy well was linked to a charitable hermitage run by the Brothers of Lazarus, who were associated with the Knights Templar. Its spring water was believed to have substantial healing properties; and an additional attraction was a selection of artefacts, including Robin Hood’s bow, cap, chair, arrows, boots and bottle.
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Another Robin Hood Well by the A1 in Yorks |
During the 17th and 18th centuries, it was one of the most popular tourist attractions in England and remained so until 1825, when it had its liquor licence withdrawn and the Robin Hood artefacts were eventually sold at auction to Lionel Raynor, a famous actor on the London stage (and he was born in Yorkshire).
Before moving to America, he was said to have offered the items to the British Museum but they can find no record. A tea room operated on the site until 1855 and when the buildings at the well site were subsequently demolished, the town council commissioned a gothic style ornamental monument to mark the spot; but in 1887 it was taken down by the Great Northern Railway to accommodate the 30ft deep foundations of an essential bridge. A century later, local historian David Greenwood sank a shaft behind The Gardeners public house which had been built at the site and confirmed that the well was still there, saying: “It’s a treasure trove waiting for the next person with the nerve and the money to fully excavate it.”
Friar Tuck and Robin’s Cave
Another local story, that claims to have located Robin Hood’s hideout, is highlighted in actor Sir Bernard Miles’ 1979 book about the outlaw hero, ‘Robin Hood: His Life and Legend’. In the epilogue, he refers to an incident in the 1820s when, somewhere near Bolsover in Derbyshire, two pitmen were sinking a shaft for a new coalmine when the earth alongside them fell away revealing a yawning gap through which there was a fireplace full of wood ash, cooking pots and utensils, blacksmiths tools and a storeroom with sacks and barrels.
Against one wall was a rack of bows, broadswords and quivers full of arrows and at the end of one of the galleries was a tiny chapel with a cross still on the altar. The miners then found a skeleton wrapped in an old woollen habit, lying at the base of a flat wall with one hand holding a crucifix and the other a chisel. A long list of names was roughly scratched on the cavern wall and painfully scored at the bottom was: “I was the last – Michael Tuck.” The skeleton was supposedly Friar Tuck’s, who appeared to have just managed to crawl there and scratch these few words before he collapsed and died. As the two miners climbed out of the shaft they had cut, to tell the world about what they had found, it triggered a huge rock fall that totally buried everything under hundreds of tons of stone, and the story of their amazing discovery became just another local legend. However, Sir Bernard claimed that Robin’s cave is still there, only a little way below the ground, close to one of the worked-out pits and that “one fine day it will be found again”.
The Missing Manuscript
For many years, Nottingham historian and Robin Hood enthusiast, Jim Lees, worked tirelessly to prove that the legendary outlaw was born in Nottingham and believed that a lost ancient manuscript was the missing link in the quest. The authentic, historical document was said to record a court appearance by Robert de Kyme, a nobleman born in what is now known as Bilborough – and actually referred to him as Robin Hood. Mr Lees stated that the ancient court record was the most conclusive piece of evidence in existence that proved that “Robin Hood was real, that he was a local man and that Robin Hood was only a nickname.” He said that Robert de Kyme was well documented in local archives and he was 99% certain that de Kyme and Robin Hood were one and the same, as their lives ran virtually parallel.
The missing document was believed to be in the possession of a former research scholar who had previously been at the University of Nottingham and who they only knew as a Mr McJohnson. Having failed on numerous occasions to track down the elusive academic, with the technological birth of the internet Mr Lees enlisted the help of his nephew, Robert Henshaw, and put out a global appeal to try to make contact with Mr McJohnson and hopefully trace the whereabouts of the vital document that he believed held the key to historically proving that Robin Hood really had existed and was born in Nottingham. However, the task proved to be the proverbial “needle in a haystack” and to date, neither Mr. McJohnson or the ancient manuscript have ever come to light.
Little John’s longbow
Local tradition has it that Little John’s Cottage was once situated on Peafield Lane, between Mansfield Woodhouse and Edwinstowe, near the site of the old Roman Road, but its precise location cannot be authenticated. Mockingly called Little John because of his tall, heavy stature, he was in fact John Nailer (Naylor), a nail maker originally called John of the Little. After Robin Hood’s death at Kirklees Abbey in Yorkshire, Little John returned to the village of Cromwell, near Newark, where he was said to have been given lands by Alan-a-Dale.
The 6ft 7in bow was made of spliced yew, tipped with horn and needed a pull of 160 pounds to draw it. Originally brought to Cannon Hall, near Barnsley, in 1729 it apparently hung on display there until the late 1960s, when on the death of the last owner of the hall, a Mrs Elizabeth Frazer it was given to the Wakefield Museum. However, Mrs Frazer’s son later took it to a manor house in Scotland where he died in 2004 and the current whereabouts of the bow remain a mystery.
If Dracula’s a National Treasure … Is Robin Hood?
The Transylvanian government secured a European Council-funded programme to develop a strategy for Romania’s huge tourist potential, and had identified Dracula as a separate national tourist asset (alongside Black Sea beaches, mountains and spas). This had brought about a World Dracula Congress in Bucharest, attended by historians, folklorists and “vampirologists” from all around the globe. Recognising the value of an international brand name such as Dracula, the Transylvanian Society of Dracula had established itself as a non-profit- making organisation, and to fund its activities it offered Dracula Tours. These range from a Grade One Tour (suitable for “balanced, classical minds, interested in the Gothic approaches to issues of broader existence”) to Grade Three tours, reserved for true initiates.
‘Quality Merchandise’
The organisation also produced a collection of quality merchandise aimed at tourists, that encompassed the finest Romania had to offer in silverware, glass, and china and so on. All of this was discreetly hallmarked with the Dracula logo –a dragon in the shape of the letter D. From a completely opposite marketing perspective, I later read about the tiny community of Hell, in southeast Michigan, USA, that uses all the benefits of its iconic name with the obvious word-play on “going to Hell” or “going through Hell”. A convenience store and bait shop also served as the Post Office, where you could get letters hand-stamped with a “From Hell” postmark, or a message to let the world know that you’ve been “to Hell and back”.
They even sold tiny baseball bats engraved with “A Bat Out of Hell”! Whatever you might think of these two extremely different approaches, they both in their own way make the absolute most of their legendary associations – which is a conundrum that Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire are still struggling with.
Robin on the Catwalk?
In 1938 when the classic Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hoodwas breaking box office records and receiving Oscar nominations, Hollywood's fashion conscious designers were quick to adapt the influences of the iconic Robin Hood hat into stylish millinery that tastefully complemented the tailored suits and smart dresses being paraded on the catwalks.
Originally used by medieval foresters as practical, working headgear, the traditional features of the hooded cowl and the long pointed brim with decorative feather were interpreted into fashionable feminine hats and hoods that appeared in films of the era.
They often also became a focal point of consumer advertising in magazines and on billboards (one of the most famous designs was used to promote Craven A cigarettes).
In more recent times the Robin Hood "brand" was even developed by Far Eastern fashion
entrepreneurs into the Robin Hood of China casual clothing range, featuring jeans, sweaters, jackets and leisure wear accessories that carried the image of Robin shooting an arrow as the trademark embroidered logo.Apart from always being in the Top Ten designs for fancy dress (hired or homemade), Robin is also a popular theme in the world of canine couture.
That's right – dressing up your pet pooch is a passion with certain sectors of America's doggy-doting community and among the selection of themed apparel for dogs on the internet is – you guessed it – the obligatory Robin Hood outfit.
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It seems that even now, many centuries after their medieval origins, hats, hoods (and tights) can still set the fashion.
I spent a lot of time on the Uri Geller piece visiting archaeological sites such as King John’s hunting lodge, and in my search for characters I visited various Nottinghamshire churches. I didn’t really feel convinced of Robin’s historical reality. But one winter afternoon, in a church in Blidworth with the wonderful name St Mary of the Purification, which I had been told was a place Friar Tuck once preached, I entered and found two plasterers at work repairing the fabric of one of the walls. I asked them if they knew the building had any connections to Friar Tuck. They shook their heads.
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| Will Scarlett's grave? |
“No,” said one of them, “but you’ll find Will Scarlett’s grave in the churchyard…” I was amazed. I asked him whereabouts it was. "You can’t miss it - it’s the stone monument with the yew tree growing over it.” And sure enough, there it was. Of course, there was no name on it to identify it with Will Scarlett, but it shifted my doubt yet again. To this day I still believe there’s more to the legend of Robin Hood than we’ll ever know.
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The Man Who Feeds The Swans PART 1
The Man Who Feeds the Swans
This is a long novel which I have been working on some years. I doubt whether anyone would publish this, yet I'd like to share the work with anyone interested enough to take time to read this in instalments. I aim to download a chapter or two every couple of days. I hope you find saga of a German winemaking family, the Reisemanns, from 1929 to 1989, to be of interest. I've enjoyed the research and the writing. But having no idea if it's any good, then its over to you. If the number of hits is so low after a couple of weeks, I'll simply delete it all.
"If there is a sin superior to every other,
it is that of wilful and offensive war. . .
He who is the author of a war
lets loose the whole contagion of hell,
and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death."
THOMAS PAINE
P R O L O G U E:
Since the day they had taken the oath, they always thought, and they were usually correct, that the wave of death and destruction they generated encompassed every living enemy. They were the blowtorch battalion, and did not fire consume everything? So it seemed. Fire could scorch out the past and obliterate the future.
To them, their victims were simple entities, biologically the same as the animals they kept, of scant use to this coveted landscape. Their houses were considered as little more than highly inflammable pig-stys. The bloody conflict of winter had been hard, with death-dealing, frost-bitten cruelty, but now in the summer, between the pitched battles, it was an easy prospect; day after long, hot day, rolling forward across the ocean of rippling, endless corn, through dark woods, forging streams and rivers, scorching, destroying. The smell of burning petrol, the crackle of blazing thatch, the smoke, the hot, comforting barrels of their guns, the joy, the close camaraderie as night fell, sharing a mess tin, smoking a cigarette, ignoring the twisted, blackened cadavers of the vaguely human entities on the side of the road.
There had, of course, been some stiff resistance. Some comrades had died. The enemy had an army of sorts, yet it was ill-led, its ranks filled with the same sub-species of homo sapiens which seemed to occupy every hovel they had torched. Yet the creatures were retreating, dispirited, stunned by the ultra-efficient bulldozer of death which crushed them like ants.
In the first faltering hours of their historic mission their task had sent a shock through their own ranks, perhaps, in those youngsters who still harboured a pale, illicit trace of conscience, even a glimmer of shame or discomfort, but this would pass. Killing was undemanding, and as the glorious, victorious days turned into weeks, their training and indoctrination triumphed. Conquest was easier without pity. They would survive and those in their path would not. It was a simple rule. They were fire, they were steel, and fire destroyed, steel dealt death. Was there an easier, more primeval and joyous way to spend one’s young manhood than this? They did not seek love. They sought fear, and the more they had it, the headier a brew it became.
On the fifteenth day, in a village of about twenty dwellings called Kharitzelov, after an early muster and breakfast they began their work again. The air was sweet and dry after the cold night and insects danced between the floating specks of dust in the sharp, cheering shafts of sunlight. They joked and laughed above the clinking of their mess tins and the soft thud of their boots on the sandy roadway. It was the last house they planned to burn, a more distinguished, sturdier, stone-built, edifice than usual, yet it would be the exception to the rule of destruction. They felt no pity as they shot the old woman, her stout daughters, their father, the two pigs and three bullocks. They took the chickens and rang their necks – a treat for the camp fire that night. But as they ranged confidently through what they imagined might be the home of the village elder, they heard the murmur of children and entered a darkened room where two small boys, possibly under five, and a girl of around 8 years old, were cowering beneath a tiny window by the side of a tall, wide wardrobe. It was a fine piece of furniture which seemed incongruous in this primitive peasant world. It had a misplaced grandeur and elegance, made before anyone in that house on that summer day had ever been born.
For the quartet of young conquerors who faced these innocent infants, this was a test of nerve. Their superior pointed to the whimpering trio, then looked at his men. He spoke their names, one by one, thorough, clear and deliberate.
“Well? You know the orders.”
The invaders’ superior could see the slight flicker of indecision on his younger comrades’ faces. This was obviously to be a re-evaluation of their courage. They had been mainly used to killing at a distance. Yet this was close-up, a scenario where the true horror of their presence was reflected back at them in the faces of their victims. The superior steeled himself, the dark, wide innocent eyes of the children blinking in terrified anticipation. They might be sub-humans, but they were still kids. It wasn’t their fault that they had been marked down by history for extermination. He raised his MP-40 machine gun, pressed the trigger and although used to such a noise, still gasped in shock as the shattering rattle filled the room, the bullets raking across the children’s chests, blood gushing through their cotton shirts.
The quartet stood back from their handiwork; three crushed, crimson-spattered broken dolls, lying in a heap like a trio of ragged, collapsed puppets. In silence they left the house. Outside, the warm June sunlight sliced through the smoke and dust. Flies were already swarming around the corpses on the dry earth road. Their unit was in motion, moving on. Why no-one had torched the house, or thrown a grenade inside, did not concern the young victors. They were making history, moving like laughing, chattering gods across their imagined pages of glory. Nothing before this mattered, nothing this day, or tomorrow; they revelled in the moment, in each new progressive, promising day. As they marched away from the stone house, how could they ever realise that this lapse in total destructive thoroughness, this strategic error, had been such a bad mistake?
When darkness fell, the summer heat had given way to the chill blanket of night, and the mechanised, clattering rumble of the conquerors had subsided. They were now another five miles to the east of smouldering, destroyed Kharitzelov. As the bitter moon rose over the silent remains, in the stone house of the murdered children something moved. It was hard for Andrey Shiropilov, pushing the wardrobe door open. His limbs ached and he was exhausted, his mouth and lips dry with dehydration. In that dark, polished wooden box, constructed with pride by an unknown craftsman, perhaps a century earlier in some unfamiliar city many miles away, breathless terror had ruled for several hours, a dread so great as to prompt involuntary urination and defecation. As he pushed yet harder, something was blocking the way. Summoning up what strength he had, he shoved firmly and then stepped out in the darkness onto the lifeless head of Josef, his youngest son. Stiff and short of breath from their cramped confinement, Andrey’s wife Natasha unwound herself from her constricted, agonising posture. She tumbled out through the wardrobe door, falling onto her husband’s arched back.
They lit a candle, and threw caution to the wind. Their sobs of abject grief could well be heard miles away, yet they no longer cared. Perhaps death would be a relief. Their shame was part of their tragedy; why had they not had time to try and cram the children into the wardrobe? Why had they survived? Yet Andrey had been convinced that they’d be safe, that true men at arms would never harm tiny children. This would now be a stupidity he would have to live with for the rest of his bitter days. It seemed as if their instinct for survival had also made them into cowards.
Natasha sat by the wardrobe, cradling her dead son’s head in her lap. Andrey held the candle over his crumpled daughter’s face. To his utter amazement, her eyes flickered.
“Katya? Katya? - Natasha – she’s alive!”
v v v v
Markenburg 1985
The swan, like the soul of the poet,
by the dull world is ill understood.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Markenburg sits on the north bank of the Mosel River between Koblenz in the north and the ancient city of Trier in the south. There is a special quality to the climate here, its soothing warmth trapped above the flowing river, pleasingly imprisoned in this deep, abundant valley. Here the lush vineyards stretch up the lofty hillsides, various shades of vibrant green, clinging in the genial sunlight to patches of fertile soil which nestle between the rugged, dark brown outcrops of rock. The wine comes late in its Reisling autumn from tight, hard tiny grapes, their eventual essence bursting with floral flavour.
In such a place of natural beauty the rigours of history and mechanical advance can sometimes seem irrelevant. Perhaps it is only electricity and traffic which separate Markenburg from its simple past. Where horses and coaches once clattered along the black cobbles, sleek Mercedes, Audis and BMWs are parked. The dark green, art-deco metal street lamps are ornate, Parisian in style, and along the promenade red and white banners bearing the town’s crest flutter in the balmy breeze. Markenburg is a tourist postcard, a colourful rectangle of pastoral German beauty to send around the world.
Below the tranquil, bee-buzzing verdant vineyards, the town trades on its medieval memory, a magnet for visitors who arrive each summer in their thousands to stroll down narrow, cool cobbled streets shaded by towering timbered houses. The brochures tell no lies; this is, indeed, a classic Mosel wine town, and has probably looked this way for centuries. As summer turns to autumn the annual wine harvest is celebrated with a week-long festival, a noisy riot of brassy, oompah-driven music and ceremonial parades wherein this year’s Wine Queen is elected, forever a pretty young Teuton, not necessarily catwalk thin, more of child-bearing hips, fresh of face and bright in personality. On the afternoon of the last Saturday in August, preceded by lofty proclamations by the Burgomeister, her appearance is heralded by the primeval drumbeats of a troop of guards bearing lances, their red and green 17th century costumes all adding to the colour of the spectacle. Following behind, like ageing vestal virgins in flowing white gowns, come the wine queens of previous years, from the still attractive twenty-somethings to those, now matronly, who had once matched their beauty, now portly mothers or ancient grandmothers. After toasting the crowds with her green wine glass, the fulsome Wine Queen stands behind the microphone on the bandstand and impresses everyone by making her inaugural speech in German, French and English. It has been this way in Markenburg for as long as anyone can remember.
High on the hills above the town stands the castle, from which Markenburg takes its name. It was in this towering, turreted monument that ancient kings and Teuton knights fought and squabbled over blood-stained local valleys. Today, with its silent cannons, colourful flags and reproduction suits of armour, it exists to prove to tourists that when it comes to elaborate, embellished history, Germany has the real thing – no-one needs the ersatz Disneyland pastiche.
A popular highway, the B49, runs from the town of Wittlich all the way north to Koblenz, hugging the banks of the Mosel for almost 70km. As it passes through Markenburg, it comes closer to the river bank than anywhere else along the route. Along this 2km promenade the Mosel pleasure boat jetties jut out into the placid water upon which hundreds of pleasure seekers will cruise on the numerous triple-decked boats. On board they are served good, cold German beer, bottles of fine Rhine and Mosel wine to accompany their schnitzel, wurst, frites and sauerkraut. On the larger boats, at night, beneath festoons of multi-coloured, twinkling light bulbs, the river revellers will be regaled with musical selections provided by a variety of live acts, some young and disco-flavoured, others specialising in that peculiar middle-aged brand of German popular music, a mix of thigh-slapping, stein-raising jollity and sentimental ballads about sailors missing their loved ones. These ships of sheer delight share the ancient waterway with long, low and slow cargo vessels plying their trade from Trier all the way to the mighty Rhine and beyond. This is a waterway where pleasure and profit cruise side by side.
However, there is one small Markenburg jetty, which the boats no longer call at. At nine in the morning and around seven at night, a broad assortment of river fowl, ducks and swans, assemble here. They know that at these times someone will appear at the end of the old, rusting pier with two large paper bags of bread. He is an old man. His hair is thick and white with the odd streak of blonde, a reminder of his youthful days.
Over the years he has become such a regular fixture that local people no longer notice him. In fact, according to some of the much older Markenburgers, this aquatic wildfowl attendant is simply part of a ritual which goes back further than they can remember. Someone has always fed the swans. The legend is that the custom was initiated by some kind of mythical river maiden, her identity lost in the mists of time. Although slightly stooped, his frame bears a hint of a once powerful body. His eyes are icy blue, his jaw square, and his face ruddy from an outdoor life. Morning and evening, he is there. He may be seen occasionally in one of Markenburg’s shops, yet he rarely speaks. Sometimes, on summer afternoons, he can be spied half way up the hill in his quiet corner of the castle’s beer garden, enjoying a cold Bitburger pils and smoking a cigarette. Only a few people know his name, yet they never engage him in conversation. He is known only as ‘the man who feeds the swans’.
Tourists staying in the nearby Promenade hotels often come out onto their balconies when the old man appears. The swans lead the charge, surrounded by a flotilla of noisy ducks. The elegant, snowy beauty of the swans with their long, undulating necks is contrasted by the scurrying, busy brown flock of raucous mallards as they dip, dive and fight for tasty, man-made morsels. The old man plunges his strong hand into his carrier bags and spreads the carefully portioned bread far and wide around the pier with a gentle wave of his arm, reminiscent of a man sowing seed in a field. The tourists, shielding their eyes against the low rays of the setting sun, holding their glasses of chilled wine, make comments.
“Ah … how nice …” and “Oh ... look at that kind old man …” Whether or not they ever stop to wonder if there is anything beyond a love of wildlife or kindness in this continuing convention seems immaterial. Like a carving, a statue, a famous waterfall or any other tourist attraction, the man who feeds the swans is simply … there.
v v v v
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Swans chapter 1
The Man Who Feeds the Swans
Chapter 1:
Chapter 1:
Munich, 1978
The Cog
‘Life can only be understood backwards;
But it must be lived forwards.’
Sὄren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
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| Stadelheim Prison, Munich |
In Germany they used to call prisons Gefängnisor Knast. Later, they became known as Justizvollzugsanstalt, which, roughly translated, means ‘institute for the execution of justice’, known simply by their initials, JVA. However, to the gaunt, elderly prisoner waiting in the draughty, echoing corridor outside the Governor’s office on the cold, late October day in 1978 such semantic niceties were of scant interest. Some of the later inmates had expressed their view that compared to the jails of old, this place was a hotel. Yet to the lone waiting man, a prison was a prison, an encirclement of impregnable walls where life ebbed away and liberty remained as a cherished daily dream.
In Giesing, just south of Munich, Stadelheim prison had cast its brooding shadow over Stadelheimerstrasse since 1894. Many of its inmates knew what they needed to know about Stadelheim’s history. Dark places breed curiosity. The area is surrounded by two fences: a 3 meter high outer wall to prevent break-ins, and an inner fence to prevent break-outs. On each corner is a watch tower. In 1,210 cells all manner of miscreants have spent their time. Rowdy drunks from the annual Oktoberfest, paying for their excess with a vomit-stained night, a fine and a stiff lecture; burglars, fraudsters, murderers, misguided political extremists, and others, long-time internees whose records were far more complicated. Like most penitentiaries, Stadelheim exceeded its official capacity for inmates. Those with the privilege of a single cell were problematic prisoners, and the character in the corridor, one of the long term ‘complicated’, was one of these.
Today was a day he had long dreamed of, yet he wondered, after 20 years, how he would handle the sudden break in his daily routines. Breakfast served at 6.30am, white bread, butter and marmalade. Lunch at the unorthodox hour of 10:30am and dinner between 3 and 4pm, everything washed down with watery tea. Lights out at 10pm. Way back in 1958 he could never have imagined that this manner of incarceration could be his fate. Things had gone too well. Yet a man’s past is like his shadow; it never leaves him. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those distant days still haunted him.
Now the undercurrent of cold air wafted around his ankles as he stood patiently at attention outside the Governor’s office, waiting to be called in. The dullness of the iron grey late autumn sky outside had made Stadelheim’s interior seem even more dark, bleak and doom-laden than usual, yet he was relieved that the cold harshness of the night-time fluorescent lighting was absent. He hated those faintly humming lights, their stark, inhuman, economic functionality, and the way they made him feel as if life was being spent in a warehouse full of bankrupt human stock. Other thoughts ran through his head – if this is the day I have dreamed of, then what will the rest of the dream – the unwritten, obscured chapter, be like? What was life like out there in Germany? Could that alien, gaudy landscape he’d seen on television, that place where strange rhythmic music pulsed, where girls now showed their thighs, where outlandish men in peculiar clothes had shaggy hair, offer him anything at all? How would he cope with the sudden end of the unrepentant dull rhythm of Stadelheim life? Who would provide the white bread, butter and marmalade?
From his cell window he had been able to see the stark, skeletal dark treetops surrounding adjacent cemetery in the Perlacher forest. With its neat rows of tombstones and carefully tended graves, all accessed by a latticework of radiating paths, the cemetery seemed to go on forever. He saw it as a symbol; perhaps his cell was God’s waiting room; perhaps there wasn’t any Germany out there at all, just that forbidding graveyard. Maybe he was in some kind of paranormal borderland between what had once been life, with all its hopes, joys, past and potential future, and that waiting desert of death beneath the groves of spidery trees. The cold fingers of other dark thoughts often encircled and gripped his mind. Prisons were also places of exit. Although there had been unforgettable times in his life when the daily possibility of sudden death in a blaze of glory had seemed invigorating, the thought of an anonymous end within these walls seemed to offer the ultimate insult. His only consolation was that the ice-cold, churning world of his distant past had softened. It was a small comfort to know that his would not be the fate of many who had met their end here. He had had the time and the curiosity to learn about them all. He had immersed himself in history, yet the deeper he delved the more he agreed with Voltaire; “History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.” And the dead were all around him, their ghosts not only in the prison confines, but roaming in their eternal grief across Europe.
Stadelheim’s cells were the bloody pages of a grim chronicle compressed between brick and concrete covers. It had been here, from June 24th to July 27th1922 that Adolf Hitler was imprisoned for breach of the peace. Stadelheim had also loomed prominently on the so-called ‘Night of the Long Knives’. In cell 70, Hitler’s brown shirt comrade, Ernst Röhm, former Sturmabteilung Chief of Staff, refusing to commit suicide, was shot on 1 July 1934. Career Nazi Peter von Heydebreck was imprisoned and murdered by the SS here during the same ‘Röhm-Putsch’. Hans and Sophie Scholl, both members of the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance movement were guillotined on 22 February 1943.
The man waiting in the corridor knew all their names. He often thought about what that day in 1943 must have been like. Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, Willi Graf, all sadly misguided members of the White Rose. How could these kids have been so naïve to think they could stand in the path of the juggernaut which was the Third Reich? He knew that some of their graves were out there beyond the perimeter fence. As he stood in the corridor, shifting his weight from foot to foot, he recalled the previous year, 1977, when Ingrid Schubert of the Bader-Meinhof gang had hung herself in her Stadelheim cell. Despite his own dread of an incarcerated death, he had vivid memories of how her suicide had inspired him. Her expectation of Germany was so empty that life itself had no further value. He had no sympathy for her cause, yet envied her courage and the utter sense of release her death must have brought.
The office door opened, causing him to flinch from his reverie back to reality. The guard looked him up and down and gestured with a wave of his hand.
“He will see you now. Enter.”
The prisoner was familiar with the Governor’s office. The broad, oak, leather-topped desk, the green filing cabinets, the electric typewriter, the telephones, one green one red, the hefty glass ashtrays courtesy of the Lowenbrau Brewery, the collection of pens in an old Bavarian bier stein. The previous governor, Herr Gluckmann, was old enough to understand the plight of this quiet lifer. It had been Gluckmann who had arranged the few extra comforts of his cell, and helped with his charge’s academic rehabilitation. He’d even allowed him a TV set, and praised his woodwork in the prison workshops. Yet the new governor, Franz Drecker, was too young to appreciate the history of the silent figure standing before him. Drecker was one of the new Germans, born in 1943, not in the greater Reich but to emigrant parents in faraway Canada. The Drecker family’s heritage was light years away from that of his older prisoners. Astute, ambitious and highly educated, the new governor’s lofty moral grasp of his parents’ homeland’s history set him bitterly at odds with the morose individual who had entered his domain. The prisoner was tall, square jawed, blue-eyed, with thinning steel grey hair and a two day stubble. His shoulders were broad and Drecker wondered what this man would have looked like three decades earlier. Today, as if to impress the governor, with admirable discipline, he stood to attention as rigidly straight as he could. Drecker studied the prisoner’s file, a bulky manila folder containing many pages of yellowing documents.
“You may sit down.”
The man dragged the tubular steel chair into position and sat there quietly waiting as Drecker traced a well-manicured finger across lines of typed text. He looked up.
“So. Your day has come. How does it feel?”
The prisoner shrugged. “I feel nothing. Not yet.”
“Not … yet?”
“How will I know what I feel until I am free? I am still sitting here, in Stadelheim. My feelings are the same as they were when the bell rang at six this morning.”
The governor looked bemused and nodded slowly.
“And what are your plans?”
The man shook his head.
“Plans? What plans can a man of 71 have after twenty years in this place?”
“Well, you are educated now. For a man of your age, I’m impressed with the amount of time you’ve spent in the gym. You are remarkably fit. You could enjoy another 20 years and make something of yourself.”
With an edge of bitterness, the prisoner laughed gently.
“The optimism of youth. ‘Make something’ of myself? What – a vegetable in a wheelchair? I am old, Herr Drecker. The only exercise which has kept me supple has been within the confines of Stadelheim. I know how long it takes, how many steps, to walk from one end of the compound to the other. But out there the roads go on forever. I am old and I feel it. I relish neither aspect of the future; the slow march to death in here, the slow march to death out there.”
Drecker shook his head and sighed.
“Such unwarranted negativity… this is a land of opportunity. We have found you a hostel, and your rehabilitation officer will help you to find ways to run your life. Surely liberty is something to be celebrated?”
The prisoner looked past the governor through the large barred window, where a hefty black crow was hopping along the top of the high perimeter wall.
“Yes. As you say, liberty is a cause for celebration – that is, of course, if liberty is the reason for this meeting.”
With a lop-sided grin, Drecker shook his head.
“Ever the damned pessimist. You know quite well it is.”
Drecker snapped the file shut, stood up and walked around the desk, then perched on its edge looking down at the morose figure before him.
“I suppose you heard about Peiper?”
“Yes. I heard.”
“Does his fate concern you?”
“No. It was justice of some kind. Cruel but inevitable.”
“What do you think now, looking back over your life – has it been wasted?”
The prisoner bridled at what he regarded as sanctimonious moralising.
“No more than yours.”
A flash of annoyance passed over Drecker’s face.
“But we are not here to discuss my life. We’re here to establish your release. What about your family? Do you have someone to contact?”
“I had a brother.”
“Are you in contact? Do you know where he is?”
“No. I’m really a kind of outcast. I don’t even know if he’s alive. Even if he is, I doubt if he’ll give me a warm welcome. It’s been what … over thirty years since we last met.”
“Why haven’t you kept in touch?”
“Shame.”
“How do you mean, ‘shame’?”
“He was ashamed of me. And rightly so. Now please, don’t go on about it any longer. Suffice it to say I have no-one. It might sound sad, but I’ll have to live with that.”
Drecker took a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes from his pocket and offered one. The prisoner took it eagerly and they lit up. The blue smoke swirled around the room, inducing a more relaxed atmosphere. Drecker exhaled, went back around the desk, sat down and opened the file again.
“I see they released you from your first imprisonment in 1948. You were very lucky. Not many came back. I see you were free for almost nine years. It must have been quite a blow when they arrested you again. Surely, during that time you were free, you must have developed some friendships, some acquaintances. Are you in contact with anyone from that time?”
“No. I don’t know anyone. ”
“No-one? There must be someone, some person who’s occupied your mind.”
“Forget it! Of course there’s people who ‘occupy my mind’ but that’s about it. I no longer know them, who they are, what they’re doing, so I know nobody, so leave it.”
Drecker sighed and closed the file again. He sat back, took a long draw on his cigarette as he regarded the taciturn man who was once again staring past him at that persistent crow on the wall.
“In a few minutes you can go down to the main office and collect your belongings. They’ll provide you with some funds and the hostel’s address. Your rehabilitation officer is a nice woman – Helga Lorenz. She’ll meet you there.”
The prisoner savoured the cigarette and tried to imagine what lay ahead. A woman, trying to guide him to rehabilitation. It all seemed like a pointless exercise. Drecker leaned toward him and with narrowed eyes said
“Of all the cases in this establishment I have always found yours one of the most fascinating. I suppose, in the final analysis, you only had the good of Germany in your heart of hearts.” The prisoner stared long and hard at the governor, stubbed out his cigarette in the Lowenbrau ashtray and gave a sardonic chuckle.
“Huh. Heart of hearts… I only had one heart, unfortunately.”
“But, misguided or not, you gave it to Germany.”
“What could you possibly know about Germany, growing up in Canada? Your parents must’ve been crazy, bringing you back here.”
“Well, the fatherland is always the fatherland.”
The prisoner wondered if there was a hint of sarcasm. Worst still, was this some kind of misguided condescension? He turned his head to one side and grimaced as if he’d smelled something bad.
“I’ve heard that somewhere before. The ‘fatherland’. Hah! Some father. Some land. Look where it got me.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve had time to reflect on it all and twenty years adds up to a lot of redemption. But before you go, I’m curious; looking back, how do you feel about your former life and your incarceration? Do you still have any guilt?”
The man stood up and pushed the chair away, then leant on the desk, both hands spread out on the rich leather. He looked long and hard at Drecker.
“You remind me of a little kid who looks at a racing car or a helicopter and thinks ‘how does that work?’ You think that people like me are some kind of workshop manual to help you discover how the history machine functions. Well I’m not. I’m a piston ring, a carburettor, maybe a spark plug, a cog in the works. Can a cog feel guilty? Oh, yes. Does a spark plug experience remorse? Damn right I do. I was in the wrong engine, the wrong vehicle, on the wrong autobahn. But I wasn’t driving. Guilt? Guilt? You have no understanding of the word.”
Drecker interrupted with a shake of his head and a short laugh.
“Ah, I can predict the next line. I’ll bet it’s something to do with ‘I was only obeying orders’, eh? You ‘weren’t driving’ … yes, that gives it all away.”
The prisoner threw his head back, closed his eyes, then opened them, leaning forward with his hands still on the desk.
“What do you fucking well know? You’re a prison governor, not a judge. I’ve been judged, thank you, and I’ve paid for that judgment. So don’t even thinkyou can secong-guess my situation. You weren’t here. You were filling your diaper in the fresh air of Canada when I was filling my pants on the Eastern front, with only seconds separating us from death. You have no idea of the tidal wave of bent politics that rolled over us before you were born. You’ve learned it from books, son. I livedit! How dare you judge me. You’re not qualified. I’m giving my guilty heart to the world on a platter. I was wrong, yes, Germany was wrong. But you? You? You probably feel guilty if you fart in company, or steal someone’s parking space. But that’s not guilt. Real guilt is toxic, corrosive – it eats into your heart, it shreds your conscience, steals your sleep. The cardinal points of my life’s compass were branded upon my aching brain with a hot iron - youthful stupidity and crass ignorance whilst you were still cosy in your crib in Toronto. Yet there were others with much more guilt than mine who have not paid this price. They’ve had abundant lives behind their smokescreen of re-invented history. Take a careful look up the chain of command - there are those who even pay your wages whose consciences are buried under a layer of denial, compromise and good luck. Ask them the same question and see what answer you get. Now – issue my release documents and let me get away from here.”
Drecker regarded him for a few moments, rolling his tongue around in his cheek like a gardener pondering over which branch of a rosebush to crop next.
“Such eloquence. You express yourself with some articulation. It would appear you’ve gathered some erudition from all those books in your cell.”
The prisoner sneered.
“Erudition. Huh! An open mind and a pile of books – is that how you see it? Let me tell you, governor, ‘erudition’ in here is like keeping a spider in a matchbox. By the time you’ve stopped being scared of it, it’s dead. So, I’m just the dried husk of an old tarantula. Open the box and tip me out!”
Thirty minutes later the heavy gates of Stadelheim opened and the tall figure in an ill-fitting, dark blue double breasted overcoat, carrying a leather hold-all, stepped into freedom. He glanced at the buff card the warden had given him. Helga Lorenz, 148b Jacob-Geld-Platz. Catch the U-Bahn from St. Quirin Platzto Candidplatz. These were civilian activities he’d only seen on his TV screen.
The oppressive October sky had cleared, and he stood on the pavement casting a long shadow in the bright autumn sunlight. He flinched at the passing traffic, his mind awash with competing emotions. He began to feel like a drowning man. Old and deeply-buried memories were materialising. His past, sealed away, locked down and subdued in his prison cell, now began a steady cranial parade which he could not stop. He sucked in the free Bavarian air. Was this the same air he had breathed as a young man? Perhaps, yet it contained the spores of other lands, and with each breath dark, forgotten flavours intervened; France, Belgium, Greece, Russia. Guilt. Did he have guilt? It weighed him down like a ton of concrete. Why this torture, why now? With each faltering step forward, his heart raced. Above him, high on the wall, the crow was still there; it made a cackling sound, as if some evil witch was casting a spell. He began to walk a little faster now, as if to escape his own conscience, and then realised; despite the card and the instructions, in the greater scheme of things, he had no idea where he was going.
v v v v
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Swans Chapter 2
THE MAN WHO FEEDS THE SWANS is an on-line novel project whereby a chapter of the work is downloaded every 2 days. To start at the beginning with the prologue, scroll down to July 3.
Chapter 2:
Markenburg:August, 1929.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth,
every fresh morning a little youth,
every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860
The Mosel’s first Trockenbeerenauslese was made by the Thanisch estate from the Bernkasteler Doctor vineyard in 1921. It made young Gunther Reisemann’s father very jealous, because the wine, which would sell well and inspire what came to be known as a ‘Doctor’ craze, was bound to be a success. But the small Reisemann vineyard had already been through so many disasters with the deterioration of the vines. The disease Phylloxera had meant that, by this Markenburg summer of 1929, the few good grapes Viktor Reisemann managed to produce were only adequate enough to avoid bankruptcy and offer his struggling business the slimmest chance of survival.
Life on the land had been marginally better than the acute privations suffered by urban Germans, yet thousands of farmers had been forced to sell their holdings. For generations the Reisemanns had maintained a strong tradition of bartering with local farmers, and land not taken up by vines had always been given over to vegetables. Although Viktor had struggled, narrowly avoiding his vineyards going under the hammer, his sons Gunther and Albert had been a help to him since leaving school. They were, like their father, big, muscular young men. Gunther was regarded by many as the gentle giant of the two, not so prone to anger. Albert was different. He possessed the same blonde, blue-eyed strength and physique, yet he was the Reisemann boy the local youths never messed with. He could be like his brother, kind sometimes, helpful, thoughtful, articulate, but a violent whirlwind if provoked. Three years older than Gunther, Albert had been his protector throughout their schooldays. Now, on the threshold of manhood, that protection was no longer required. The Reisemann boys, like their father, could well look after themselves. Viktor always hoped that his sons might carry on the family business when he finally retired, but although they knew every task and point in the winemaker’s diary, they never expressed the level of enthusiasm for the vineyard Viktor had hoped for. He had a large frame on the wall above the fireplace setting out, in colourful Teutonic calligraphy, what was expected of a winemaker;
THE REISEMANN CREED: The Winemaker’s Ten Commandments.
1. Cooperate with skilled and knowledgeable viticulturists.
2. Constantly monitor the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality,
thereby determining the correct time for harvest.
3. Diligence when crushing and pressing grapes.
4. Pay maximum attention to the settling of juice
and the fermentation of grape material.
5. Be extremely vigilant when filtering the wine to remove remaining solids.
6. Test the quality of wine by tasting - and if you need help from good palates, invite them along - they’ll be keen enough!
7. Place your filtered wine in our casks for storage and maturation.
8. Carefully make your plans for bottling wine once it has matured.
9. Ensure that quality is maintained when the wine is bottled.
10. Try and get the best price for our product, and never let a customer down, be honest, be fair, deliver on time, and always respect the competition.
It wasn’t exactly a workshop manual, but he’d hoped that by seeing this every day that Albert and Gunther might at least know their duties when, or if, the time came for them to take over.
The vineyard still received the odd valuable export order, and their Reisling was enjoyed by many aficionados as far away as Britain. The family’s small boat, the Falkon, which was fitted with a petrol engine not long after the Great War, had been instrumental in bringing in some extra income during hard times. The family had always been as skilled at navigating the Mosel as they were at producing good wine, so 19 year old Gunther was proud and pleased that he’d been taught everything he needed to know about transporting goods up and down the river. Nothing made him happier than being on the water; it seemed the ultimate freedom. During the summer of 1929 he’d been allowed to make a couple of longer trips on his own, and managed to collect the fees due to his father, which impressed Viktor and made him very grateful. Gunther wished there were more opportunities to sail, yet much of the family’s time and effort was taken up on the land. In the busy periods, such as planting, the harvest, and bottling, Viktor would employ as much casual labour as he could afford. However, the acreage they enjoyed on the hillside included some assets many of his competitors envied. As well as the good soil, the Reisemanns had benefited greatly from the heritage left to them by their predecessors on the hill over a century before. At some time in the mid-19th century two natural caves discovered in the bedrock of the hill had been expanded, with many sizeable side-chambers blasted into the rock, with interlocking passages and large storage areas. With the installation of electric lighting, this meant that the complete process, bottling, labelling and storage of the Reisemann wine could be achieved almost in secret, precluding the need for expensive outbuildings. Viktor had even installed a small rail system with defunct equipment bought from a closed mine in the next valley to shift barrels. Deep in his secure tunnels there were still stored vintages for which people from far and wide were more than happy to pay a high premium.
Yet Germany’s seemingly endless trough of depression had taken its toll. Viktor had become an unhappy man, and although dedicated and willing, Gunther was becoming dissatisfied with life on the hill. Yes, they’d been lucky. And yes, Markenburg was a nice part of the country, much better than the grimy city life. But for a virile young man there was little to do in the form of adventure. He could go for a beer sometimes with friends, but they were the same old faces, and every time Gunther went into town yet another one had left to look for work elsewhere. Since leaving school he knew he’d failed to achieve anything remotely memorable or remarkable. He did well at the Volksschule and later managed to pass exams with good marks. Like his older brother, he was fit and good at sports, especially boxing.
Like their father, the big Reisemann boys were known among their friends as genial, tough characters, good to have around, because nothing stood in their way.
But now Gunther wondered if this struggle up there among the vines was all life had to offer. Up in the morning, out on the land with his father, run errands down the hill with the cart, and home again. The only two high points of the year were the wine festival and Christmas. With a few old school friends in 1928 he’d taken a train to Koln to visit the fair there. As usual, they drank too much beer and enjoyed a laugh or two, but it wasn’t much of an adventure. Some summer nights he would sit outside on the veranda holding a pocket compass, and watch the needle as it flickered in a northerly direction. He knew that beyond the northern horizon, perhaps only a three or four hour train ride away, the sea was waiting. The sea; the end of the land and the beginning of the world.
It was this sense of boredom that had eventually driven Albert to leave home. He had found work in a Munich furniture factory. His departure had caused his mother much anguish, yet his father understood the reasons why the lad had left. Gunther only hoped that the family would show the same understanding when his turn came. However, for the time being, staying at home had slight compensations. Like his parents, Gunther enjoyed reading, and there was always a lively discussion going on in the Reisemann house around current affairs.
Many of his friends had left school early because of the terrible economic struggle of the past seven years, yet the Reisemanns survived because of the community up on the hill. Compared to what was happening elsewhere in the country, with stories of escalating poverty, starvation, suicides and bankruptcy, at least this family had never gone to bed hungry. As well as growing their own produce, Frau Reisemann, Elena, skilled in the art of bartering, often managed to get bread when no-one else could.
In addition to his immense strength and capacity for long hours of physical labour, Viktor Reisemann was a man of impressive intelligence and wisdom. He maintained that his sons should have as much education as he could afford. He had always bought books, and negotiated with Markenburg’s retired academic, Professor Steiglitz, to give the boys private instruction in the classics, German and history. The old Professor was a good man who had lost his post in Essen when the French occupied the Ruhr in 1924. He never went back. Viktor could not pay him in money, but kept him supplied with wine, whilst Albert, naturally skilled at carpentry, had kept the Professor’s house in good repair. But when the ailing Professor Steiglitz passed away after a long illness, there was a brief intellectual void in the Reisemann household. Steiglitz had been a wise mentor, and was much missed. A staunch patriot, he had left a letter addressed to Gunther, in which he suggested that Germany would one day be a great nation again, and that the country’s miserable existence would not go on forever. Gunther had always worried why the letter was simply addressed to him, and not Albert. When he showed it to Albert, the older boy simply shrugged, commenting that every teacher had a pet, and that unlike his ‘little brother’, he had always argued with the old man over certain points.
“If you need answers, Gunther,” said Albert, “you need to ask questions.”
Yet such optimism, even from such a learned old man as Professor Steiglitz, had trickled away into a forlorn hope in 1929, and some of the history he had taught made Gunther want to escape and immigrate to America. Yet he knew the time was not yet right, and in any case, such an act would break his mother’s heart.
Viktor had a keen interest in politics, yet Gunther could never see why his father spent so much time on the subject. In his opinion, politicians seemed to do nothing but live luxuriously and tell lies. He found it increasingly depressing to hear his father repeat the mantra that yet again, Germany was on the brink of an even greater depression. Things had been bad enough, but another depression? How much more could they take? What had they done to deserve such privation? Yes, they had lost a war, but the Reisemanns had never stopped working, day in, day out. They considere they had nothing to do with the national economy, the banks or high finance. They had done what was expected of them – obeyed the law and worked hard. And thus Gunther pondered; why elect these politicians if all they did was talk, live high on the hog and steer the population into more misery? Yet despite the repetitive, grim assessments, Gunther looked up to his father. After all, he’d been a brave man who had served his country, and whilst serving with the Army of the Mosel between 1914-17 he was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross, which was proudly displayed in a small glass case on the mantel above the fire. In many ways, Viktor’s deceased older brother, Kurt, also enjoyed ‘hero’ status in the family. Kurt had been too old to serve in the Great War, but had volunteered to look after the business in Markenburg during those difficult times.
Viktor’s younger brother, Karl, worked on the railway. Gunther regarded Uncle Karl as a fascinating character, fiery, self-opinionated, yet always clued up with the latest political information, whilst his obsession with official facts, figures and statistics sometimes bordered on tedium. Karl travelled far and wide across Germany. Gunther frequently asked if there were any vacancies on the railway for someone like him, yet the answer was always no. A single man living in Koblenz, Karl often came to see Viktor on his days off, bringing news about what was happening around the country. One day he brought a page from an old newspaper which he’d found in the Stationmaster’s office at Koln. It was from the fourth issue of a publication named Der Angriff, dated 25 July 1927. In this newspaper there was a general attack on the government. This impressed Viktor, who had pinned it up on the parlour door, much to Elena’s disgust, telling Gunther and Albert;
“You should read it every day, because this is what’s wrong with this country”. Gunther had read the yellowing newspaper clipping so many times that he eventually he knew it off by heart.
‘The German people are an enslaved people. Under international law, it is lower than the worst Negro colony in the Congo. They have taken all sovereign rights from us. We are just good enough that international capital allows us to fill its money sacks with interest payments. That and only that is the result of a centuries-long history of heroism. Have we deserved it? No, and no again!
Therefore we demand that a struggle against this condition of shame and misery begin, and that the men in whose hands we put our fate must use every means to break the chains of slavery.
Three million people lack work and sustenance. The officials, it is true, work to conceal the misery. They speak of measures and silver linings. Things are getting steadily better for them, and steadily worse for us.
The illusion of freedom, peace and prosperity that we were promised when we wanted to take our fate in our own hands is vanishing. Only complete collapse of our people can follow from these irresponsible policies. Thus we demand the right of work and a decent living for every working German.’
Albert had been particularly taken by the article, and before leaving home for Munich, had even copied it down in an exercise book. Yet Gunther found it puzzling. He’d remembered what Professor Steiglitz had said. They were the words of a Greek who lived 400 years before Christ. ‘Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship’. So, this man called Goebbels, writing in Der Angriff , had given a clear picture of what was wrong, yet apart from suggesting ‘a struggle’, hadn’t offered any solutions. In any case, what ‘struggle’ did he mean? Wasn’t that what everyone had been doing for years – struggling? Staying alive was a struggle. Did he mean the kind of struggle the Bolsheviks had had in Russia? If so, then the failure of Germany’s communists, the so-called ‘Spartacists’ to take over Bavaria or Berlin was a poor example. Then there were the growing ranks of disenchanted ex-soldiers, the Freikorps– they ‘struggled’ violently on the streets every week yet seemed to make no advances whatsoever. And this suggested struggle – would the big businessmen, the bankers and the aristocracy join in? It seemed doubtful. According to Viktor, with a few exceptions, most of them had been absent from the trenches during the war. Yes, something needed to happen, yet all that seemed to transpire was that things became steadily worse. Gunther mentioned all this to his friends in the town but few were interested. They were spending their adolescence in the only social climate they knew. Politics, for the time being, was not their problem. Most had only just left the challenges of puberty, and now they simply lusted after girls and, when they could afford it, beer. So Gunther had come to understand that it was pointless to expect the same level of discussion on serious topics that he enjoyed at home. Even old Professor Steiglitz had frequently said to him “Everyone deserves to remember the joys of youth.”
However, when it came to girls, Gunther was cursed with the same weakness as his lusty friends. He had seen the girl he wanted a few times in the market place. He didn’t know her name but she was beautiful, elegantly tall, with dark hair and brown eyes. Shy and awkward, and unable to discuss his desire with his friends, he had no idea how to go about it, yet he fervently hoped that one day he might have a chance to talk to her. Perhaps, he thought, she might even be elected as Markenburg’s annual Wine Queen one year. She was certainly pretty enough.
Elena Reisemann, well-rounded, energetic, blonde and full-bosomed, was a religious woman. She prayed daily to the Virgin Mary and always welcomed Father Heinzel into the house when he could find the time and the energy to waddle up to the top of the hill on his worn-out donkey. Viktor’s religion, battered by war and economics, had withered on the vine and he frequently argued with his wife about the Catholic Church.
“What bloody good are priests?” he often asked, and “Where was God at Versailles when we were crushed and humiliated? He has abandoned us. You pray all you like, my dear, but Germany will not get any better.” And Elena would always respond;
“Ah, but we’ll all be better off when we get to heaven,” a remark which would infuriate her husband.
“Well, I hope your pope is right, and that there is a heaven, because I’m sick of us all living in hell!”
Gunther loved his mother, but could not help agreeing with his father. He had noticed how the priest, Heinzel, always went back down the hill into town with his donkey loaded up with gifts – wine, vegetables, which the poor people of his flock had given him. No wonder he remained so fat whilst everyone else got thinner. Yet people still crowded into his church every Sunday, and they still attended mass every day. Gunther could never see the point.
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Swans Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Munich: September 1929
No doubt the artist is the child of his time;
but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favourite.
Friedrich Schiller
The scruffy woman in her shabby coat nursing a whimpering baby. A snoozing drunk with vomit stains on his lapels. An old man in a greasy forage cap, puffing out clouds of pungent pipe smoke. The crammed tram rattled and rumbled along through the still bustling Munich twilight. Horse-drawn carriages clopped on by in both directions. Men ambled along in silk top hats, still a bourgeois favourite for those who could afford one, yet facing the expanding challenge of the more popular, debonair Homburg. Better off women in fancier, wide-brimmed headgear sauntered with their men, the old and poor in their headscarves. Who were these people? Where had they been and where were they going? On the pavements the poorer folk, the shabby, the artisans and the beggars were shuffling on to wherever their bed might be for that night. The hot Bavarian summer was over. Nights were drawing in. The Hallertau hops had been harvested, ready to be made into good Munich beer, that antidote to the dark economic misery of the impending winter. Everyone seemed so separate, so self-contained, like the scattered pieces of some huge jigsaw puzzle.
Looking around at the other passengers on the tram as it made its metallic, clanky progress along Friedrichstrasse, Albert Reisemann wondered if this sorry-looking cross section of Munich’s society had any inkling of how vibrant and important his racing inner thoughts might seem to them. Then there was a smart, upright man, probably in his 50s, sporting a severely waxed moustache. Had he fought for his country? And what about the lady in the large, ostentatious velvet hat with her arms around a basket of apples. Where did those apples come from? Where had they been picked, where was she taking them, and who would eat them? Why did she have apples when people were hungry? What was she prepared to do for Germany? As the tram stopped to pick up more passengers, two fresh-faced young men both wearing corduroy suits flopped onto a seat opposite. Albert could see that they’d been drinking. They had that bloated, florid look. One of them let out a loud belch as the other stared across at Albert, looking him up and down. He nudged his flatulent companion and then he too began to stare at Albert. Their look was sneering, disdainful. Albert was tempted to stand, to rise to his full height and slap them across their arrogant faces, but he knew that on this night, above any other, he must restrain himself. You’re sneering now, you bastards, he thought, but just you wait. You’ll be sneering on the other side of your faces. He looked away, and within a few minutes he was clambering from the tram at the corner of Schellingstrasse.
Smartly attired in his freshly washed and pressed Sturmabteilunguniform, it was after 9 pm and dark when Albert approached Theodor Dormer, who sat at a desk in the entrance hall outside the office at 50 Schellingstrasse. Theodor was a tough young man from Stuttgart, like Albert, tall, broad-shouldered, blonde and blue eyed, a look which seemed to be characteristic among all the recruits to the growing Schutzstaffel. Albert had met Theodor when he’d arrived in Munich a year before, and it was Dormer’s political zeal and enthusiasm which had convinced him to join the SA. However, since Theodor had entered this new and slightly mysterious order, known as the SS, they had lost touch.
“Albert. What brings you here at this time of night – don’t you have to be up early to make tables and chairs?”
Albert sensed a slight edge of derision here, but knew it was dangerous to rise to any bait.
“I’ve missed you out on the stump, Theodor,” he said, smiling, “we broke a few skulls together, eh?”
Dormer grinned and nodded.
“Well, its fine breaking skulls if there’s no brain inside, but there’s more to politics than smashing commies and Jews. I’m involved in something a bit more subtle and sophisticated these days.” To Albert, the words ‘subtle’ and ‘sophisticated’ seemed very odd coming from Theodor Dormer. Sure, he was generous, could be funny sometimes, and he had a way with the girls, but on the street with their platoon this dedicated political soldier was animalistic in his brutality. Other SA recruits called him ‘the sledgehammer’, and he was well known for putting a number of communists in hospital and for seriously injuring a hapless Rabbi they had come across who had been taking a walk through the Hofgarten. He used to brag of a battle in Dresden between the SA and 50 communists, some of whom he’d thrown out of windows to their deaths. So, the idea of this merciless party member and ferocious friend becoming subtle and sophisticated presented something of a conundrum.
“Is Herr Himmler in tonight?” asked Albert.
“Ah – try not to forget – he has a proper title now – we’re calling him the Reichsführer-SS. Wait here.”
Dormer knocked on the dark oak door and from within a voice sounded.
“Come.”
Dormer entered and re-emerged a few seconds later. The door remained half open and he gestured Albert to enter.
But for a pool of yellow light from a green-shaded lamp on his desk, Himmler’s office was almost in darkness. Albert glanced around. On the wall hung a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler, and alongside this a larger picture, a press photograph of Himmler at the head of an SA platoon, carrying the ‘blood banner’ of the failed 1923 putsch. Along one wall was a row of filing cabinets, and stacked on a table beneath the curtained window, piles of leaflets, booklets and posters.
Although only eight years older than Albert Reisemann, there was a mature air of inscrutability around the Reichsführer SS which made his real age seem indefinable. He bore no resemblance to the pure Aryan hero he often promoted in his pamphlets and speeches. With his sparse moustache and a faint hint of five-o-clock stubble, this slight man with his severe haircut and receding chin looked up from behind his rimless spectacles wearing a curious half smile. Albert knew that many of the older comrades in the brown-shirted ranks of the SA loathed and detested this peculiar little figure. Most of the SA commanders were openly jealous of his impregnable closeness to Adolf Hitler.
“Ah. The young craftsman from the Bluthner works. I think I know why you’re here. Perhaps you want to know about the furniture ordered for the Führer?” Albert, standing to attention, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and felt slightly ill at ease.
“Well, Herr Reichsführer, not so much myself, but for my employer, Herr Bluthner. He has expressed his concern. Things are difficult at work …”
Himmler sat back in his chair and the light from the lamp now only fell across the lower half of his face, yet Albert could still see two pinheads of light reflected above in his spectacles. The previous smile waned.
“Things are difficult all over Germany,” said Himmler. “But if we are prepared to make sacrifices, this can alter. Tell me about yourself. What is your name?”
“Reisemann. Albert Reisemann.”
“Age?”
“22.”
“I hear from your accent you are not a Bavarian. Is this correct?”
“My home town is on the Mosel – Markenburg.”
“So. Your father is … let me guess – Viktor Reisemann, of the winemaking family?” Albert felt a chill pass up his spine.
“Er… yes … but how – “
Himmler leaned forward into the light again and his smile returned.
“I have friends in Koblenz. They had a stock of Reisemann wines from one of the good years. I am not a great one for wine myself, but they spoke well of your father’s product. And there is only one Reisemann family in Markenburg, according to your local SA members, so it was a fair guess that you were Viktor’s son. Knowledge, Albert. Knowledge and intelligence. This is what we need to make progress. We must know our enemies and our friends in full and equal measure. Tell me. How long have you been in the SA?”
“Eleven months next week.”
“And what do you think to the experience?”
“In what way?”
“Political battle. Have you been afraid, injured, ashamed, happy or sad? Have you gained any positive views – will you remain in the SA? What about the party – what are your thoughts – can we get someone into the Reichstag? Can we gain power?” Albert’s gaze wandered around the room as he struggled to form an answer.
“Herr Reichsführer, I have been happy to serve in the SA. I have been injured twice but not seriously; two broken ribs and some bruising. But I feel that the SA are the vanguard the country needs to drag us back to civilisation, and as long as we can carry the people along with us, we can indeed get someone from the party into power. And I would stay in the SA but, if we could ever get our army back onto a respectable footing, then I would prefer to bear arms for Germany.”
Like a snail slithering back into its shell, Himmler retreated into the shade as he sat back in his chair again.
“Are you fit and healthy?”
“Of course, Herr Reichsführer. Never a day’s illness, I’m a good swimmer and boxer and I play football.”
“How tall are you?” These questions began to seem bizarre to Albert.
“Five feet eleven and a half inches.”
“Do you smoke and drink?”
“I used to smoke, but I like a beer on warm days when I’m thirsty, but I also like to stay in control. Too many SA men, in my opinion, drink too much beer.”
Himmler’s fingers were drumming gently on his desk blotter.
“If you had the opportunity to serve our Führer in a more disciplined and special way, would you be interested?”
“Of course.”
There was a pause as Himmler leaned forward and with a black fountain pen, wrote Albert’s name on a pad.
“Good. Tell Herr Bluthner that you can deliver the furniture next Wednesday at 2 pm to the Führer’s new residence at 16 Prinzregentenplatz. I will arrange to leave the payment for the invoice with the janitor there, Herr Schissler. In the meantime, I may have to carry out some research into your background. I presume there is no Jewish blood in your family tree?”
Albert gasped.
“Absolutely not!”
Himmler stood up and walked around the desk, taking Albert’s hand in his and shaking it. His heart pounded and he felt stunned as the soft, almost womanly fingers, dry and slightly warm, encircled his.
“You must realise that if I decide to make use of you in the manner I have described, that this will require a great sacrifice on your part. Family, work, other relationships will all take second place to everything in your life. Stern and unremitting demands will be placed upon you. Are you prepared to endure such a regime for the greater good of Germany and the Führer?”
Albert’s mind raced as he tried to take all this in. He took a deep breath.
“Whatever it takes, Herr Reichsführer – my heart and soul, if needs be.”
Himmler smiled and nodded.
“Good. We shall meet again, Albert Reisemann.”
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Swans Chapter 4
The Man who Feeds The Swans is a novel, a chapter loaded onto this blog every 2 days.
Chapter 4
Munich: September 1929
“They hurry toward their destiny as though it would not wait.
They push the rolling world along with their shoulders.”
John Steinbeck: The Moon Is Down
Pieter Bluthner was confused and nervous. He was beginning to regret pushing his furniture business so hard in such difficult times. Yet in the Summer of 1929 the chance to have a stand and exhibit his products in the Munich Arts and Crafts exhibition, a costly exercise, as it turned out, seemed a last ditch idea to pick up some much-needed orders. His new Volkskunst(People’s Art) rustic range was at least different to some of the more outlandish modernity on display. But the exhibition had been over for a month and although he had received a few small orders, he was becoming worried about the big one, a special commission, which had been placed by a curious, slightly reserved gentleman from the headquarters of the National Socialist Worker’s Party Headquarters on Schellingstrasse. This was for a large ornamental carved cabinet and a long dining table with twelve specially designed chairs.
Bluthner had no interest in politics. With his workshop on Briennerstrasse being so close to the city centre, like many other locals he’d witnessed most of the violent demonstrations and marches which had taken place since the war, right back to Hitler’s ridiculous, failed putsch in 1923. Pieter Bluthner was simply a craftsman with a head for business, a hard worker with a reputation for good work. He paid his taxes and kept his nose clean. He’d seen them all; liberals, democrats, communists and socialists, and he voted for none of them. If he had any sympathies at all they rested in the old days when the Kaiser ruled and everyone respected law and order. Since losing his wife to tuberculosis in 1926, he had dedicated himself to keeping the business afloat, yet the constant pressure of the devastated economy had reduced his staff from nine men to just three, and now he was faced with sacking at least one more. The lad from Markenburg on the Mosel, Albert, was talented, resilient and fit, and he had a natural talent for working in wood. He was top of the list for redundancy. After all, he was a single man, impressively tall, handsome and strong, so Bluthner felt that in time, given his skill, he would find another position.
However, there was an additional deciding factor in Albert’s case which made his boss feel the need to dispose of his services. Albert Reisemann had become one of those brown shirted political street fighters, regarded by Pieter Bluthner as little more than uniformed thugs and vandals, and in the close confines of the Bluthner workshop he had become a disturbing, argumentative element. His two fellow workers, the elderly Giessen brothers, Johann and Ulrich, had started to complain about their talented underling. After weekend exercises with the SA, the youngster was often late for work. He had become belligerent, always armed with a sheaf of inflammatory political leaflets. Yet Bluthner had no choice but to keep him on a little longer because it was through Albert’s connections that they had received the big order. Once it was delivered and paid for, the lad would have to go.
Johann and Ulrich had worked at their trade for almost 30 years, with only Ulrich’s employment broken by a spell in the Bavarian Infantry during the war, whilst his brother’s twisted leg, the result of a logging accident in the Black Forest, had exempted him from service. Pieter Bluthner felt trapped in a spiral of pessimism. He imagined that things could never improve, and that like the Giessen brothers, he was facing the end of an era.
It was raining on the Monday morning when Bluthner opened up the workshop at 6 am. The first noisy trams whirred and cranked resolutely by as Munich awoke. Along the wet streets and sidewalks the city’s working population was on the move. Stooped workmen with their heads bent, the laden carts of optimistic market traders rattling over the glistening cobbles.
Ulrich and Johann turned up, as punctual as ever, at 7. But there was no sign of young Albert. Johann puffed on his pipe as Ulrich stirred a foul, bubbling pot of unpleasant-smelling animal glue.
“You know, Herr Bluthner,” he said, “that lad’s one hell of a worker, but only when he’s here.”
Bluthner removed his spectacles and polished them on his apron.
“Look, lads, I’m as disappointed in the way he behaves as we all are, but once that big order’s been delivered, I can give him his marching orders. He’s our contact with that chap from Schellingstrasse – what was his name again?”
“Himmler,” replied Ulrich. “My cousin’s family knew his family, but I didn’t say anything when he came in. I don’t like the look of him, to be honest. Reminds me of some kind of chinless oriental … a bit Chinese. Anyway, I’d heard he’s supposed to be a chicken farmer. Now I hear he’s running some kind of security or bodyguard outfit for that loud-mouthed little Austrian corporal. We’d all be better off if he just produced eggs.”
It was 7.45 am when Albert burst breathlessly into the workshop. The Giessen brothers didn’t look up, but carried on with their work. Bluthner watched him take off his coat, don his apron and pick up his chisels. The old man felt exasperated as he stood there with his hands on his hips like some irate wife preparing to welcome a late-night drunken husband. Why didn’t this damned youth say something? Did he think he could simply start work without an apology?
“What time do you call this?” asked Bluthner.
Albert threw his coat onto a hook on the door and walked over to his bench.
“I apologise, Herr Bluthner, but we had a very important rally yesterday over at Landsberg. I arrived home very late and I’m sorry – I slept in. I’ll make up the time.”
Bluthner shook his head and sighed.
“Oh! Wonder of wonders. An apology, even. You’re damn right you will. You’re as good as two men missing. I could understand it, a fine young chap like you, if you’d been out with a girl, but to be wandering around with that pack of brutish louts?”
Albert slammed a chisel down loudly on the bench. Ulrich and Johann stopped work and stared at him.
“And I, Herr Bluthner, could understand it if a man of your age took more of an interest in his country – and the SA are not brutes or louts – we’re political soldiers, and we’re going to pull the fatherland up by its bootstraps!”
Johann re-kindled his pipe and looked disdainfully at Albert.
“Huh. Landsberg, eh?” mused Johann. “Wasn’t that where your loud-mouthed little Führer spent his time – in jail?”
Albert cast a withering glance at the old man, and then looked back at Bluthner, but his boss’s angry expression convinced him that he had better work rather than continue the argument. Bluthner left the workshop and slammed the door after him.
The men worked away diligently, almost in silence apart from the whirring of a wood-turning machine, for over two hours until Ulrich poured three cups of coffee from a battered and sooty enamel pot on the stove. As they paused to drink, Bluthner re-entered.
“Albert. I appreciate that you brought that fellow Himmler in to see us, but now we’ve made his order up what the hell do we do with it? It’s clogging up the timber store and needs delivering – especially if you all expect to be paid next week. So, where is the stuff going? When? How’s he going to pay us?”
“I spoke to someone in his office about it,” said Albert, “and he wants it to be kept quiet as the order is a special gift.”
“Fine,” said Bluthner, “Who for? His wife? What are we waiting for – their wedding anniversary or something? And before we organise any transport I want to see the colour of his money!”
Albert sipped his coffee and gave a crooked smile as he looked at each of his three colleagues in turn. Bluthner found this young man’s arrogant lack of respect outrageous. Yet in a perverse way, Albert was enjoying all this. He had a feeling he was certainly on the way out, but his meeting with Himmler had buoyed him up. He felt he had a future far more important and way beyond glue, chisels and wood shavings.
“Look at you all. You don’t realise what a big change is coming, do you? And you don’t realise how significant that cabinet and those chairs and table are. Important people will sit on them in the future – you mark my words. It might interest you to know that the man you call ‘a loud mouthed little Führer’ – my brilliant leader, Adolf Hitler, has bought a luxury second floor apartment on Prinzregentenplatz. People have so much faith in the party that he’s been able to buy his new home just from the donations well-wishers have given us. The stuff we’ve made is a house warming gift from Himmler. So, stop fretting about it. I’ve been to see Herr Himmler and we have to deliver the order next Wednesday at 2 pm to the Führer’s new residence at 16 Prinzregentenplatz.”
“The ‘Führer’?” sneered Ulrich, “that jumped-up little creep? Listen at you – you’re just the same as the bloody communists – with them it’s all ‘commissar this’ and ‘commissar that’, and with you lot it’s ‘the Führer’.”
“Have some respect!” bellowed Albert, brandishing a chisel, “at least Herr Himmler is a paying customer, not like some of the Jews we’ve dealt with!”
“That’s enough, Albert!” shouted Bluthner. “My customers are my business and it is not for you to pass judgment. In any case, how do we know this Himmler fellow is going to pay us – because if he doesn’t, all your wages are down the pan for this next week!”
“He’s already arranged it. We send the invoice with the delivery and the janitor will have the money ready for us.”
As a member of the SA’s rank and file, Albert had listened carefully to the grumbling undercurrent of his leaders, such men as Ernst Röhm. Albert found the merciless, bull-necked Röhm quite frightening, yet Hitler seemed to admire the man who set the standard for courage in street fighting. The unusual meeting Albert had experienced with Himmler almost made him feel like a traitor to the brown shirts, because he was fully aware that the SA saw the formation of some elite interior body, the so-called ‘protection squad’ for the Führer – the Schutzstaffel– as some kind of unnecessary competition.Yet he also knew that, unlike the brown shirts, the SS tended to avoid controversy and kept their noses clean. Visually, at least, they presented some kind of dignity, albeit with a sinister edge. Röhm always complained that whilst the SA did ‘the dirty work’ – the street fighting, the breaking up of the opposition parties, and, rumour had it, much worse, Himmler’s ‘gang’ were strutting around with their silver skull and cross bone badges and black ties like some elite political order of Jesuits. Yet to Albert, there was something mysteriously attractive about the SS. Earlier in the year, when Hitler had given Himmler the responsibility of building this Praetorian guard, it had just 200 members compared to the SA’s 170,000. Now he realised that this elite was growing, and he had heard from reliable sources in the ranks of the NSDAP that to be an SS man was something rather special, and as such, this appealed to his youthful vanity.
His meeting with the Reichsfuher-SS Himmler had been a strange, almost mystical experience. Albert still wondered what Himmler had meant when he had asked if he would like to serve the Führer ‘in a more disciplined and special way’. If he was to believe some of his SA comrades, then it seemed likely that this SS organisation was simply what they claimed it to be – nothing more than an ill-timed challenge to the SA’s huge, nation-wide fighting spirit, but led by Hitler’s most loyal and most toadying supporter, a man whose odd visage and impenetrable character were hardly likely to make him a poster boy for the planned muscular and masculine Aryan fatherland. Yet Albert had listened to many speeches during his time in the SA, and read all the literature. He was intelligent enough to realise that it would take more than brutal physical coercion to win over the people of Germany. If it did, then those methods were available, tried and tested. But Himmler’s words kept coming back to him. Knowledge. Intelligence. Albert liked the idea of being something more than a courageous thug. It needed thought, cunning, planning, indeed, inscrutability – all of which political assets Heinrich Himmler possessed in abundance.
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